A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!”
– Mark 3:32-34

Spend any time at all in communities challenged by poverty and violence, and you will encounter people who have spent formative stages of life without the blessing of family. Such hardships may be part of your own story, and you know the reality all too well.

For abandoned people – who may be found in any corner of society – the words of Jesus in Mark 3 can provide genuine comfort and hope. Jesus re-frames and re-constitutes “family” in such a way that it includes those formerly excluded. It follows a pattern deeply embedded in the gospel story: Jesus sets a table for all, and gives preferred seating to the most unexpected guests.

If that were all, it would be plenty. But there is more to Jesus’s teachings and actions here. Much more – a thundering earthquake in fact, shaking the foundations of humanity to the core and re-ordering all. The Teacher is not simply re-arranging the chairs for a few overlooked guests. If so, at most there might be murmurs of protest among regular folks and guardians of the social order. Instead we find this comforting passage situated amid near-chaos.

“The crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.'” (3:20-21)

Whoa! It’s only chapter 3, Jesus is just getting warmed up, and things have gone from zero to redlined in a flash. “And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.'”

It’s a rhetorical trap, of the sort Jesus is often portrayed deftly evading. Fearing his popularity as a healer-exorcist, they tag him with the rap that he’s actually using the Satanic power of the “Ruler of the House” (Beelzebul in contemporary notions of the supernatural) for his liberating work.

Instead of evading, Jesus pivots directly into the accusation. “If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come” (3:26). He goes on to give a vivid image of the ruler of a house burglarized, bound, and plundered.

The reason Jesus is not content to evade the accusation is that in itself it illustrates the very nature of the demonic at work in humanity. At its very essence, the demonic dynamic is to divide and expel. It is the essence of the scapegoat mechanism – the relentless impulse to accuse and cast out. It is the impulse that will by the end of Mark’s gospel have Jesus murdered.

Of all blasphemies, Jesus teaches, there is none so fundamental as this: to identify the accusing, dividing, and expelling energy as the energy of God’s spirit. Yet that is exactly what these human accusers are doing, because they have imagined a religious and social order around exactly such catastrophic energy.

It is a deception that has permeated every strand of human social fabric – down into the weave of family life itself. Families have been understood as closed systems that must maintain clear demarcations between insiders and outsiders. The family name must be honored and preserved, with the dishonorable cast away. But here is a rabbi who casts out and casts forth in a way that no one has seen! Unlike with other healers and exorcists, the “castings out” of Jesus are for the liberation of all, not division and expulsion.

Such plundering and ransacking of the self-oppressed household of humanity – for breathtaking liberation and inclusion of all – is the work of God in Christ, but would remain incomprehensible as an abstraction. Mercifully and most powerfully, Jesus simply shows. “Looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!'” (3:34). That’s it. To reinforce the simplicity, Jesus says they are the ones who “do the will of God,” which he has shown to be nothing more or less than living into the liberating delight of the One who welcomes and gathers all.

The good news is not merely that Jesus makes more space in a human family that has forgotten its hospitality. Jesus announces another way of humanity; a reframing and reconstitution of family itself. It is a blessing of family we all may share, as we embrace the true liberation the Spirit of Christ brings.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
Street Psalms

Read more about Scott’s experience creating family with Romanian orphans here.

“As you have sent me into the world,  
so I have sent them into the world.”
– John 17:18

We call it “The Great Commission”: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). It has become such a key text for many Christians devoted to mission that we might imagine Jesus alerting his disciples to get their pens ready; “Ok, listen up! Now I am about to give to you MY GREAT COMMISSION.” Or perhaps the disciples, upon hearing Jesus tell them to go and teach the world, looked at each other in awe and said, “We must be receiving in this moment “THE GREAT COMMISSION.”

However, the term “Great Commission” never actually came from the lips of Jesus nor his disciples. According to David Bosch in his groundbreaking book Transforming Mission, it never even appeared in the annals of church history until the 1800s. It was William Carey, the father of modern mission and founder of the Baptist Missionary Society, who dubbed Matt. 28:19-20 as the “Great Commission” while he was raising support to serve as a missionary in India.

He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
– Luke 24:36-43

The story of God in the world, because it is a love story, moves ever toward intimacy, toward oneness.

As with all love stories, obstacles abound – comical and tragic misunderstandings, turnings away, outright betrayals, and faltering reaches toward the other. There are risks of disclosure and perils of shame. Longings awaken; emotions surge. Bodily sensations pulse.

The story of Jesus, as the story of God, moves ever toward intimacy in just such a tumultuous way. On the evening of his own betrayal, Jesus’s fingers are among his guy friends’ toes, caressing away the dirt of the long road they have traveled together. He must remember the soft hair and tears of a sex worker between his own toes on another occasion, as Peter now blurts out “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (John 13:9). It surely is a fumbling, terribly awkward affair, as genuine intimacy – outside of movies – invariably will be. It was a move toward communion, toward oneness.

This week’s gospel account picks up in the aftermath of betrayal, tragedy, and loss. His presence, while it has been desperately missed, now could not be more awkward and even terrifying.

Every Wednesday evening with our young friends in Romania follows a pattern, a liturgy of sorts, that provides reassuringly regular rhythm amid lives of tumult. After sharing a meal, we gather in a circle for a moment of connection before the training time. Mind you, the average age here is 25. And mind you, for our friends who were abandoned as children, connection is the greatest of all challenges. A typical symptom of attachment disorder is the inability to make eye contact at all. Overzealous caregivers get into wrestling matches over attempts at it, with the kid winning every time.

So it is a miracle of sorts, though a fumbling one, that finds us massaging lotion into a partner’s hands within the circle. Or playing Rock Paper Scissors to determine who will look into another’s eyes with a word of affirmation. Or molding something together out of Play-Doh, or applying band-aids to physical or symbolic wounds. It’s a resurrection miracle possible only after years of traveling a dusty road together. Anyone can opt out and sometimes someone does, but not often. We have our awkward fun, and thank God no one’s looking in.

Very most challenging of all, we take turns feeding candy into each other’s mouths. What is it about the intimacy of food, and the primal function of accepting nourishment from another into our own bodies? Daunting and exposed for any of us – not to mention for a person who never had a mother’s breast or even a warm bottle with a loving gaze. We’ll feed our own selves thank you.

“Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence (Luke 24:43). What vulnerability! What trust! What a move toward communion, toward oneness.

As was the case the night before he died, Jesus began to “open their minds” (Luke 24:45) only after he shared both physical touch and dinner. “Connection before correction,” is a mantra we caregivers of traumatized children have learned to practice. Connection in the aftermath of trauma is terrifying – fraught with resistance and doubt. It can’t be rushed. Thankfully love is patient and kind, even when firm. But it moves, moves, moves toward oneness, as Jesus moves in this beautiful story of good news.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
Street Psalms

Photo: Toe-Clasp by judy_and_ed (CC BY-NC 2.0)

“I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I and not another. How my heart yearns within me.”
–Job 19:25-27

We made it!! For us as a community following Jesus, this Easter declaration by Job in the midst of his intense suffering, pain, and loss is a fitting bridge from the season of Lent into the great light of resurrection.

We began the Lenten journey over six weeks ago and have persevered through a long, arduous journey toward and through the cross. Today is Easter Sunday, and we declare with S. Lewis Johnson that “the resurrection is God’s ‘Amen!’ to Jesus’s statement, ‘It is finished.'” The intense birthing pains and excruciating suffering of Friday have now given birth this day to the resolute hope that we find in an open and empty tomb.

Job’s declaration in the above scripture is a resignation to joy. He has lost all else. He thus resigns himself to seize the only thing that yet remains: “I know that my Goel (kinsman-redeemer – a relative who restores honor and rights to an enslaved family member) lives.” Job realizes that while his friends have been a complete failure to him and even his wife has told him to curse God and die, Yahweh is Job’s Kinsman-Redeemer.

The kind of suffering that Job has experienced gifted him with the ability to live in an elevated awareness of truth. It is this gifting that allowed Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga to describe the murder of his friend as “A Beautiful Gospel Time.” His friend, a fellow priest, was killed at a police station where he had gone to protest the mistreatment of two indigenous women.

Have we not seen over and over in our work that suffering and pain have a relentless way of driving us into the realm of truth? In our Street Psalms networks we often find ourselves marinated in contexts of affliction. Easter thus becomes for us an opportunity for heightened awareness of the great gift of living truth that has been bestowed upon us.

I want to challenge us to lean into our gift in a new and fresh way this year. In the bold, clear declaration of truth that is birthed in pain, we as a community of the incarnation live out our prophetic role in the world. It is part of our unique charism to have the privilege of pointing to the “beautiful Gospel times” in hard places that others often do not have the capacity to see.

I am especially drawn to Job’s use of the pronoun “my” when referring to the Redeemer who lives in the midst of his pain and incalculable loss. The Redeemer – who in the end will stand upon the earth after Job’s skin has been destroyed – will be seen by Job in full clarity. Luther wrote somewhere that “the marrow of the Gospel is in the pronouns,” and this is vividly true in Job’s personal declaration of truth. My young daughter once brought this home to me when she told me I was the “best Papi in the world.” Selfishly wanting to hear her reasons for making such a declaration, I asked her why she thought this to be true. She simply smiled at me and said, “Because you are mine.”

I am well aware of Martin Buber’s admonition that “woe to the man so possessed that he thinks he possesses God.” It is not that Job thinks he “possesses God” – the reality of his pain and suffering would never allow him to make that leap into arrogance. Rather, God allows himself to possess Job in a fierce and tender kinship that restores honor from disgrace. It is that truth that transports Job into such a state of wonder and awe that he can make this declaration. It’s a declaration we share this Easter morning.

Gustavo Gutierrez writes, “Job’s declaration is a kind of paradoxical resignation to joy that is nothing else than the recognition of the strengthening presence of God and the community – a recognition in which our fears, doubts, and discouragement are routed by the power of God’s love.”

What an indescribable joy it is for us as the Street Psalms Community to declare on this Easter Sunday that we know our Redeemer lives! This is indeed a most Beautiful Gospel Time.

Peace,
Joel Van Dyke
Street Psalms

Photo: Easter – Christ appears to Mary by JESUS MAFA

The woman said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.”
– John 18:17

Dietrich Bonhoeffer begins his book Life Together, a treatise on community written from the underground church situation in Nazi Germany, with the startling reminder that Jesus suffered and died bereft of the community he held dear. The crowds turned on Jesus in the end; okay, everyone knows fame is fickle. And from the day of his first public sermon, he had enemies. But his closest friends had shared the intimacy of a long meal the evening of his arrest. In a matter of hours they would be gone. Mark reports, “They all ran away” (14:50).

Along with the physical wounds suffered by Jesus in his darkest hours, there were the kind of wounds that reach deeper than thorns, nails, or spear. His cry, “I thirst” (John 19:28) surely was not limited to cravings that a damp sponge could alleviate. This is not to minimize the impact of physical trauma on the whole human psyche. But added to his afflictions is this trauma: to be deserted, alone in extremis, in the most vulnerable moments of his life!

I have loved ones in hard places, and the hardest place of all may be the place of abandonment.

In Romania, when I have asked my longtime orphan friends to tell something important about their life story, they have replied, “sunt abandonat” (I am abandoned). It is the central wound of their lives – a wound that festers far into adulthood.

It is a tragic thing for a child to have parents die and to be left alone in the world. My young friends might envy that circumstance – to be able to cherish the memory of their flesh and blood taken away by some turn of fate. For almost all of them, however, their parents live in the next village or the next valley. For reasons a sociologist might try to explain but a child cannot fathom, they were not wanted. Their abandonment was a deliberate act. “I know the feeling of hugging,” one said. “And I know the feeling of being tossed out like a useless rag.”

A young man counts from one to five on his hand, unfolding his fingers from his fist. “One, two, three, four, five children in my family. I was fourth.” He taps on his fourth finger. “Fourth, and the only one abandoned. It was catastrophe for me! Why me, the fourth? I could understand if I had been the first, and my parents were too poor and not ready. Or the last, and they could handle no more. But the fourth?”

“Once I showed up at the door,” another related. “I had planned this for a long time, and one day I did it. I saw my siblings through the doorway, and it was like looking in the mirror. They had my features! I thought to myself,

‘In there is safety, and security, and love. They have a place to be, and they know whom they belong to.’ I asked my mother if she knew who I was and she stammered, ‘Yes.’ I asked her if she loved me and she did not respond. I asked her, ‘Why did you abandon me?’ and she had no answer. Before I could speak any more she slammed the door.”

On hearing his friend relate this story, a fellow orphan said, “There is not a night in my life I do not lie on my bed and remember the reality of this: that I have been left alone in the world by those who should have cared for me. And there is not a day in my life I do not feel in some way absolutely alone.

Jesus knew, and knows. On this of all days, abandoned. By a great mysterious paradox, the One who was born Immanuel – God With Us – is now on his dying day with us in the absolute extremity of alone-ness.

It is dark, dark, strangely good news today for all who thirst for presence and experience only the bitter ache of absence.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
Street Psalms

Photo: Peter Denying Christ – Painting by Peter Janssen (1869)

Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
– Mark 8-9

This Sunday is Palm Sunday, when Jesus makes what some Christians refer to as his “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey. Crowds cheered and hailed him. “Hosanna!”

So there’s Jesus, fully human and fully divine – but he couldn’t have felt all that triumphant. He knew well to distrust fickle crowds, and he probably knew that in this very crowd were the same faithful who would crucify him five days later. Not that he disdained crowds – he is always portrayed viewing them with great compassion, and acting to bless. Nor simply that he mistrusted the crowds with his earthly fate. Far more significantly, Jesus has made it clear he didn’t trust crowds to fashion his true identity and calling. What temptations – either to mirror or despise the swirling energy. We can only imagine the stirrings within his spirit amid the fray this day.

We watch as Jesus did the “next right thing” he knew to do. There was Jerusalem and only Jerusalem for his journey home.

In our own journeys, it often doesn’t feel triumphant to come home – to self, to our past actions, to our hidden motivations, to our deepest fears, to our flawed selves, to our deepest desires. To truth. Sometimes bits of grace come through just when we are most uncomfortable. Someone places a palm frond underfoot, whether or not her sentiment will last. Someone else gives up his cloak for a cushion.

Years ago my friend tested her young marriage when she told U.S. customs that she’d brought agricultural goods back from her Italian honeymoon. Two hours of bureaucracy later, confused customs agents held aloft the dried palm frond Pamela had saved from Palm Sunday services. “This?” Her new husband shook his head. But Pamela wasn’t the sort to lie to authorities. She had to be who she was.

Jesus’s triumphant journey of truth has another week to go before it’ll look anything like real triumph. Before then the skies will darken and his closest friends will turn. Crowd adoration or crowd bloodlust, disciples or no disciples, Jesus resolutely will be who he was made to be, and the truth he is becoming. The truth is misunderstood, vexing – and will grow ever more vexing in the coming week.

With God, Jesus holds the course. And so must we, whether or not we understand what it means.

Peace,
Stephanie Dunlap
Street Psalms

P.S. Find a beautiful prayer from our friends in Alcoholics Anonymous here.

Photo: Palm Sunday 11 by Waiting for the Word (CC BY 2.0) 

God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world.
– John 3:17-21

Glancing back, I saw my father slowly slide his belt from his trousers. He folded it in half. His face was ashen; I turned away. I tried in vain to relax my buttocks – rumored among friends to make it not hurt so bad.

I wouldn’t know. I’d never gotten the belt before, though our family was among a subculture that fostered what bordered on enthusiasm for corporal punishment of children. My Baptist school principal had no religious imagery on his office wall that I recall, but he resolutely displayed one magnificent implement none of us could miss – a bolt-reinforced wooden paddle. Both symbolic and functional, it hung heavily from a strap. I often heard smacks and groans from down the hall.

As my dad raised the belt, I flinched for the smack and readied my groan. Down came Dad’s arm. Against my skin I felt the belt, and gasped. It was simply a brush – a caress!

I turned and stared. Dad’s eyes slowly overflowed. We both trembled. He held me for a long time. I can’t remember what was said, if anything. Of course I didn’t know the moment was a pivot, a hinge in a life story, a door to a way.

What I’d done was hardly trivial. I almost burned down our house on purpose, nearly killed my sister by accident, and lied for a day as if incredulous to be the innocent victim of a diabolical setup. The first was exciting, the second terrifying, and the third utterly exhausting. Isolated by my denials and the crushing shame that fueled them, I saw no way out whatsoever.

Over the course of life I came to know my father as a man of uncommonly good judgment and vision. He could size a thing up. “This is the judgment, that the light has come” (John 3:19). Light!

Suffocating in shame and fear that dark day, I imagined only condemnation and retribution. Nothing whatever in my father created that notion. Where did it come from? In eight short years I’d picked it up – the world just works that way, right? Play with fire and a whuppin’ might be the least of it. Just ask the principal or the playground guys. I was condemned already – dead dude walking.

This was my dad’s good judgment, his marvelous sight: I wasn’t condemned at all! He did not simply withhold retribution – it was never in his character or posture toward me to harbor such a thing.

Nothing changed about my dad that day. Everything changed inside of me. Everything.

Caveats are in order:

1. Dad’s a gentle but firm man; plenty of discipline would come over the next decade. But he so loved me to life, that my trust only grew.

2. I’m surrounded by loved ones with no such dad; to you treasured friends I don’t know how to speak of this in a way that won’t hurt somehow.

3. To Dad I’ll say… whatever I’ve managed in a few paragraphs here, all these years later I’ve still got no words for the gift of that day.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
Street Psalms

Photo: “Belt” by Aurimas (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
–Mark 8:31-33

To live is to suffer, Gautama Buddha taught. This is the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

Raise your hand if by some chance your life experience has taught you otherwise. Maybe you are an extraordinarily fortunate child reading above your grade level here. Even then, I might prompt you to think again upon your few years.

I was texting with a couple old high school buddies last week. Yes we are old and yes, high school was a long time ago. One of us wisecracked about our hair, then and now. That moved us quickly to the topic of our kids, who might have something to do with the hair issues. The mood on our little screens turned very, very pensive.

Each of us three dads has children who have suffered. As it happens, each of us has a child who has attempted to end the living and the suffering. It is the deepest single valley of the shadow of death we have ever walked through.

We couldn’t have imagined the pain, forty years ago with our fishing poles. In our pensive moments even then, we imagined being in love. Probably good for us that we didn’t know all that love might entail.

I sat in a cave in the jungle in Northern Thailand a few years ago – my buddy Kris Rocke hiked up there too and remembers this – talking with an old Buddhist monk about our faiths. Bats swirled in the candlelight. The monk had been a professor of comparative religion at the university. “The Lord Buddha taught us about the nature of suffering,” he observed. “The Lord Jesus showed us about love.”

Indeed the gospel accounts of Jesus show us – above all – love. Like Peter in this week’s lectionary passage, we cannot from the beginning possibly imagine all that love entails. Were we to imagine it, we would protest strenuously – and possibly refuse its invitation altogether. Or we might embrace it with bravado and later flee before the morning rooster crows.

But Jesus teaches, rebukes, and shows. He would show in his death and resurrection what he had shown his entire life. Reflecting later about the night of the Last Supper, the Apostle John would make a most beautiful remark: “He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he showed them the full extent of his love.” (The Greek in John 13:1 is “eis telos” or “full extent,” per NLT translation footnote and other commentators.)

Past Word From Below reflections (for example here and here) have explored the demonic nature of Satan and the “human” perspective that Jesus rebukes in this passage (verse 33). Coming Lenten reflections will explore the “divine” nature of the Atonement – how the cross brings a troubled humanity into union with a loving and peace-making God. For now we can recognize from “The Son of Man” a truly noble truth about God: If to live is to suffer… then to love is to “suffer with.”

It is a truth three old fishing buddies know now. At least in part, in our own ways as parents – we glimpse the love of God the Father, even as we are invited ever deeper into the way of the Son. It is the way of the cross.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
Street Psalms

Photo: “Poland_4122 – Tolerance” by Dennis Jarvis (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
–Mark 9:2-4, 7-9

There is nothing quite so dangerous as trying to occupy the place of resurrection glory prematurely or falsely.

Throughout Mark’s Gospel, Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples not to mention his identity too soon. Theologians often refer to this as the “messianic secret.” After Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah in Mark 8, Jesus tells Peter and the disciples not to say anything to anyone. And in this week’s lectionary text, Jesus strictly warns Peter, James and John not to say anything about the extraordinary mountaintop event until after the resurrection (Mark 9:9). What a strange remark!

Why is it okay to speak of Jesus’s glory after the resurrection and not before? What will they see after the resurrection that they cannot see before?

One thing we know for certain is that when Peter, James and John saw Jesus transfigured on the mountain, Jesus had not yet been crucified. Had the disciples become evangelists on the basis of their limited vision on the mountaintop, they would have run the risk of proclaiming a false gospel in the valley. And so Jesus tells his disciples not to speak until after they have witnessed the resurrection. Jesus asks them to wait, like Job, until they have seen for themselves (Job 42:5) what it means to pass through death and come out safe on the other side. He tells them not to speak until after they have seen in Jesus’ resurrected body the very marks of death that he triumphs over. Then and only then will they have the authority to speak, not before. Then and only then, will they see things as they really are – most especially, death itself.

We have a hunch that one of the primary reasons there is so little transformative authority in the Church today is because there is so little transformative vision. So much of what passes for authoritative speech is not wrong, as much as it is formed prematurely in a kind of blindness devoid of the paschal mystery of death as a gateway to life.

Jesus implores his disciples to wait. Could there be times when we too must wait – to not speak prematurely of good news – until we are able to discern a circumstance in light of its passage through death?

Adapted from Geography of Grace: Doing Theology from Below, by Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke (Street Psalms Press, 2012), chapter 18.

Peace,
Street Psalms

Photo: JESUS MAFA

“Tell us, then, what you think. 
Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
–Matthew 22:17

At Street Psalms we’ve grown to love “beautiful questions.” They provide doorways to freedom and life.

Unfortunately un-beautiful questions abound as well. These questions prove to be traps – luring us to small, confining spaces with doors that snap shut.

How very crucial to discern the difference!

Beautiful questions spring from the pages of scripture and from the life experiences of people in our communities. By some counts, there are over 3,000 questions in the Bible. Beautiful questions may be hard and haunting, or gentle and inviting – but they are capable of opening our spirits to wider and richer realities. Questions such as…

– Where are you?
– How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
– Who do you say that I am?
– What do you want me to do for you?
– How many times should I forgive?

Beautiful questions prompt us to deeper life with God and each other, especially as we explore them together.

Other questions are NOT beautiful. We come to know them by their fruit. Scripture records plenty of this variety too.

Un-beautiful questions can be posed sincerely, but start from false premises that run us off the rails every time. A classic example opens John chapter 9: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Who sinned questions virtually never become beautiful questions for our communities. Who’s to blame? Who can we scapegoat? We would do well to pay careful attention to how Jesus avoids such a trap in this important story, and prompts his hearers toward freedom.

Other un-beautiful questions come from flat-out ugly motives from the start – which brings us to this week’s lectionary reading in Matthew 22. Here Herodians and Pharisees are unlikely collaborators in a plot they hope will prove deadly. Usually on opposite sides of the political fence (loyal vs. resistant to Rome respectively), they now unite to scapegoat Jesus. No matter that they happen to have completely different views of Roman taxation. Fear and loathing bring them together. Their question represents not honest inquiry but a rhetorical trap, which Jesus calls out immediately as “hypocrisy” (Matthew 22:18). It’s not the first time for this chronic trap-question: “Is it lawful?” (v. 17).

Jesus asks for a coin used for the imperial tax imposed on every man and woman in Palestine. His questioners hand him a silver coin stamped with the image of Tiberius Caesar, and inscribed with the words “Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus.” The reverse bears a goddess image with the words “High Priest” – i.e. of the cult of emperor worship. The coin was literally the property of the divine “son of god” who demanded unquestioning allegiance and subjugation. For Jews the graven god-image and inscription represented blasphemy of course, and indeed sparked a Boston Tea-Party style revolt in the year 6 A.D. that was brutally crushed.*

Jesus answers the “lawful?” trap-question with a beautiful question. “Whose image?” (v. 20). Echoes from the Hebrew creation story are unmistakable:

“So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

“Whose image?” What vistas this opens! What imagination it sparks! What freedom it invites! What a vibrant, life-giving contrast to petty wrangling about “what’s lawful,” and what if anything might be owed to a distant despot who maintains grudging allegiance by swords and stooges. Fine, return his little coin, if that’s the extent of his claim. But the beautiful question is: Who are the true image-bearers? What might it mean to render the image of the divine giver of life?

May we cultivate discernment among questions, and eagerness for questions that open us to good news.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
Street Psalms

*For background see Craig Keener, here.

Photo: A coin with the image of Tiberius Caesar from Essam‘s photos  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”
–Matthew 21:31b

At Street Psalms we embrace a particular perspective that invites us into a grace to see from below. We do theology from below, reading the Bible with the excluded and damned. We practice spirituality from below, together learning to see and celebrate good news in hard places. We share a spirituality of imperfection that delights in the Spirit’s dance among awkwardness and disarray.

A perspective like this often leads to profound, disorientating questions about authority.

In the Dominican Republic, Pastor Francis Montas and his wife, Loly, shepherd a church of young people – Casa Joven – that meets on Saturday nights in a converted Santo Domingo nightclub. They have been core members since the beginning of our Dominican Republic missional community, led by CTM Caribbean Director Mario Matos. Their work with street kids, incarcerated juvenile delinquents, and las chicas de Sarasota (prostitutes) serves as a prophetic wake-up call to many others in the Dominican church.

One Thursday night, Francis and Loly called a special prayer service because so many young people in their flock were having serious problems. They did not know what else to do in the face of such difficult circumstances. They met in a little house near one of Santo Domingo’s most infamous streets for prostitution – La Avenida Sarasota. Their prayers for one another seemed strained and blocked somehow in a way that they had not experienced before. They began to question their own authority related to their work as a church, and a prayerful attention began to shift to the young women working on the street outside of this prayer meeting. They began talking about the women and praying for them. Eventually they felt compelled to leave from where they were and spent the next several hours outside asking beautiful questions of the “Chicas de Sarasota.”

I had the chance to go out to the streets with Francis and Loly and their team seven weeks later, during which time they had not missed a Thursday night encounter with the girls.

We experienced a numbness-shattering picture of God’s scandalous grace in the strange world of evening call girls. Every sex worker we talked to lit up as the young women from the church called her by name and embraced each with bear hugs. The women on the street updated us on their week, shared stories about their children, and received prayer with eager anticipation – all the while completely ignoring potential clients who passed by.

We had just finished sharing and praying with a group of three sex workers when one of them, whom I will call Gloria, asked if she could pray for us. Needless to say, that was an inversion of roles I had not anticipated. We all joined hands on the sidewalk of Avenida Sarasota at 2:30 a.m., and I heard one of the most beautiful prayers of my life. When Gloria uttered her “amen,” a smile exploded onto her face. She sheepishly confessed that it was the first time she had ever prayed out loud. I pretended to cough while trying to wipe away tears. Gloria received more bear hugs from the ladies and an awkward handshake from me. She said that she planned to come to church that Saturday night where I was scheduled to preach.

I thought about her promise several times over the next several days, and on Saturday night, Gloria indeed came. When the service concluded, she received hug after hug from the young worshipers, including this guest preacher, whose awkward handshake on the street a few nights earlier would no longer suffice for Gloria. She approached me with arms opened wide and a smile erupting with joy. Authority remixed??

How blessed the church in Casa Joven has become, and how their vision and mission for their city has been recalibrated through their interaction with these young women! Casa Joven is living out the missional implications of questioned authority in which the outsiders “get it.” As a result they are encouraging many other “insiders” throughout Central America and the Caribbean to exchange hugs with the “outsiders” of their respective cities and neighborhoods. And in so doing, they are giving the question of “authority” a graced-filled facelift.

Peace,
Joel Van Dyke
Street Psalms Director for Latin America
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Photo: “Mumbay Prostitute” by Salvatore Barbera (CC BY-SA 2.0)

“Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
–Matthew 18:32-35

On the surface, here is another parable that seems to contradict itself. Jesus starts off by painting a picture of mercy and ends with frightening judgment that seems to undermine the original point.

The parable begins with Peter asking about whether there are any limits to forgiveness. Peter asks, “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus completely blows the roof off the limits that Peter wants to impose and says, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (18:21-22).

“Seventy-seven” is biblical code language of eternal completeness. In other words, there is no limit to forgiveness inside the Kingdom. God does not merely have mercy, as if it were a commodity to be dispensed when feeling generous, God IS mercy.

To make the point, Jesus goes on to tell the parable about an unforgiving servant. At first the point seems obvious. Give mercy to others as you are given mercy by God. It is a beautiful picture of the Kingdom of God in action.

But the whole darn thing seems to flip right at the end. At the end of the parable, God’s judgment seems to mirror our own. Is Jesus saying forgive others as God forgives you… OR ELSE? Is he suggesting that God wants to be nice, but if you are a jerk then God will be a jerk too? What’s worse, Jesus seems to suggest that God will “torture” you big time if you don’t play according to the rules. What started as a revelation of limitless mercy ends as some kind of spiritual terrorism.

Or so it seems…

The key word in this passage is the phrase “handed him over.” It is a passive verb. The King “handed over (the servant to be tortured.” This phrase is used repeatedly throughout the Gospels referring to Jesus himself. For example, later in Matthew, “The Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion” (Matthew 26:2).

The point is that the King is not actively punishing the servant any more than God was punishing Jesus for our sins on the cross (as is commonly taught). That would make the master no different than the servant. Instead, the master releases the servant over to the hell of his own making. In other words, if we opt out of the Kingdom principle of seventy-seven, we are reluctantly handed over to the hell of our own choosing. This process will feel very much as if God is punishing us.

The diabolic logic of tit-for-tat debt-keeping binds us and blinds us. We end up seeing God and the world in the same light. We see God in our own debt-keeping image, and in the end that image tortures us. Of course, this is a hell of our own making and has no basis in reality, but it’s hard to convince someone of that while it is happening. It’s a hellish way to live, which is why Jesus was “handed over” to the crucifixion – to show the world the true end of its diabolic logic. And while being crucified Jesus declares the only way out of the vicious cycle in which we are trapped: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

Therefore, forgive as you have been forgiven.

Peace,
Kris Rocke
Street Psalms

Photo: The Stone Cross on the Hill by Tambako The Jaguar (CC BY-ND 2.0)

She came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
–Matthew 15:22-28

Can I say that I find this story the single most intriguing account of Jesus in all the gospels?

Taken at face value, it would seem to portray Jesus undergoing a complete change of mind and heart toward this foreign “Caananite” woman he encounters. As it happens, there are a number of ways to read this story – each revealing at least as much about us as readers, as it does about Jesus. I’d like to highlight three ways possible to read the story.

First, some readers are not bothered by Jesus’s apparent condescension toward the woman or her request. She is in fact not worthy of Jesus’s attention. Nobody is. Humanity is entirely unworthy and undeserving of any divine mercy whatever. The few who get it should be grateful and the rest can’t complain. I’m troubled by the picture of both God and humanity in this view, but some form of it seems common. In any case, Jesus takes note of her faith and “throws to the dogs” a token of his goodness.

Fr. Robert Voyle introduced me to another reading of this passage, highlighting what he calls the “mischievous” energy of compassion Jesus employs. (Voyle identifies three essential energies of compassion: fierce, mischievous, and tender.) Jesus sees in this woman low self-esteem and high potential. He could say, “You poor little thing, let me grant your wish” (tender voice of compassion) – fixing her perceived problem but likely reinforcing her core issue of shame. He could also rebuke his disciples for their prejudice and take her under his wing, sheltering her from emotional harm (fierce voice of compassion). But he discerns a mischievous, though quite risky, tactic for empowerment in this moment. “Why should I do anything for a dog like you?” Wow. Jesus. What? From deep within, the woman’s blood boils. A dog? Did he just call me a dog?? She squares her shoulders, raises her head, and looks Jesus in the eye. “Even the dogs,” she sputters, her own fierceness rising – “Even the dogs get crumbs!” Whoa, THAT’S what were’ talking about, Jesus exclaims – NOW we see what you got, baby, bring it! Let’s have some more of that. Now I can really get to work with you!

I love Voyle’s reading here, and I love reading through all the gospels watching these three dynamic energies of compassion at work. But there is a third reading I also find not only possible but compelling, introduced to me by Dr. Vie Thorgren. In Thorgren’s reading, this is primarily a story of Jesus himself learning, growing, and re-centering in his mission and call.

For Thorgren, solitude and presence with the poor were Jesus’s two essential teachers during his adult life. He was continually aware of his need for both, as keenly as his need for bread and water. Solitude and the poor both centered him. Both created space for him to hear the voice of his Father and the music of the Spirit. Both allowed him to grow into the fullness of his humanity and the fulfillment of his mission. Some people find the notion of Jesus learning and growing in his adult life offensive, which I in turn find odd. He surely grew, learned, and developed as a child in multiple ways (Luke 2:40, 52). How strange and inhuman it would be if he did not learn as an adult. What a shame if he could not be a model of open-hearted and open-minded growth for us as adults?

This returns us to the most face-value reading of all. Was this in fact a critical, transformational learning moment for Jesus? If so, what did he learn? How did he listen? What shifts was he open to? In a similar way as his times of desert solitude, how did he allow this encounter to stir his spirit and open his eyes for steps ahead?

We who wish to be apprentices of Jesus would do well to let our imaginations roam with this. Reading the full passage, we notice that for a time as the woman was pleading, “He did not answer her at all.” What might Jesus have been wrestling with internally, as he allowed her cries to echo in his soul? What did he allow her to teach him?

Might we grow and change with Jesus as well?

Peace,
Scott Dewey
The Street Psalms Community

Photo: Jean-Germain Drouais – The Woman of Canaan at the Feet of Christ (1784) 

“Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.”
–Matthew 14:8 

He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.
–Matthew 14:19-20

The fourteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel tells of two lavish feasts, back to back. The juxtaposition is startling – clearly arranged by the narrator in vivid contrast.

The first feast takes place in a likely setting for extravagance – amid wealth and power. Herod Antipas, a Roman surrogate “King of the Jews,” was known for a level of royal excess only perhaps surpassed by that of his father Herod the Great (mentioned at Jesus’ infancy). What Herod Antipas desired, he typically got. Not in line for the throne? An execution or two fixed that. Upgrade on a wife? Out with the old, in with the young. New palace? Sure, and a new city to put it in.

We can only imagine what a birthday party for such a man might entail. Most of it is left to our imagination, except for a few lurid details we are not spared here. Seems Herod had a fondness for young skin and became particularly enthused with his stepdaughter’s dance performance for the occasion. Probably well lubricated by that point, a gleeful Antipas makes a wild oath to grant the girl any wish. Prompted by the queen, the girl asks for the macabre appetizer of John the Baptist’s severed head. Why not? Past a certain point in the night, anything goes.

Almost anything, apparently. Even Herod has to stifle a gag reflex at this proposition. There is a backstory. In Jewish prophetic tradition, John has been the moral conscience of his people – publicly opposing the king’s new marriage arrangement. Prison fixed the “public” part. Ruthless as he was, Herod wasn’t ready for the death penalty for his critic – out of sight and earshot was enough.

On this night, however, no extravagance was too much. To save face in front of guests (rather than, surely, to maintain any integrity of his word), he ordered the gruesome platter to be served.

“When Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” It wasn’t deserted for long. Any mournful reflection and action would have to be done in the company of five or ten thousand of his closest friends and followers. Jesus might have preferred a fast, but would soon host a feast. And what a feast it became! The story is familiar, starting with five loaves and two fish and ending with baskets of leftovers.

Less familiar, and worth pondering, is the contrast in the extravagance of the two feasts. For starters…

Motive: Narcissism – Compassion

Venue: Personal palace for royal hubris – Springtime grassland, natural beauty for the refreshment of all

Invitation: Exclusive to royal guests – Welcome to all

Serves: Lusts of the host – Nourishment of guests

Empowers: One wealthy family in depraved, fearful way – All participants and families, especially servers and especially the poor

Leftovers: Revolting, useless, limited – Savory, abundant, available

Outcome: Violence – Shalom

I would invite you to think of more comparisons and contrasts, and to reflect on the two stories on a number of levels – particularly the level of public life and leadership.

Many of us are accustomed to reading the Bible with privatized application to our personal spiritual lives, which is vital. But I would like to ask an equally vital question here: What do these two stories say about urban public policy? There is lavish abundance in all of our communities. But lavish for whom?

To the extent we exercise our public leadership opportunities and responsibilities, how do we best foster a life-giving mix of:

Urban spaces: Private vs. publicly shared

Recreation and celebration, festivals: Privately vs. publicly enjoyed

Economic opportunity: Pathways for a few vs. many

Basic resources: Health care, education, nutrition, legal representation, public safety, communication systems, transportation – for people across ALL economic and social lines

Differing political and social ideologies will certainly suggest very different approaches to these ends. We should welcome the dialogue; complex urban realities defy single-ingredient recipes. While it would be a misuse of scripture to find ready-made “answers” for the challenges of our cities in its pages, gospel narratives such as these two lavish feasts can frame contours of the conversation for those of us who desire to follow Jesus in both a private and public way.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
The Street Psalms Community

Photo: Moveable Feast by Charles Roper (CC BY 2.0)

Imagine that it’s 1633 and you are hearing for the first time that the sun does not revolve around the earth. This bit of insight is being promoted by some odd guy named Galileo, who has just been branded a heretic by the Church:

We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the said Galileo… have rendered yourself in the judgment of this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine – which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures – that the Sun is the center of the world…
–Papal Condemnation of Galileo, 1633

In spite of this judgment, Galileo continues to share his vision. You can tell that he really believes in what he’s saying. There is an intuitive sense in you that he might be right, but it demands an entire re-wiring of your own vision of the universe, and it carries the brand of heresy.

Now just imagine – what if after hours of making his case before the skeptical and unreceptive audience, Galileo had changed tactics entirely. Instead of continuing to argue for what was true, imagine that he gave the audience what it wanted (what it knew) – and he did so in a way that highlighted the consequences of their “orthodox” view.

As if he said, I’m revealing a liberating truth, but if you insist on seeing things your way, then at least look carefully at your orthodoxy. Your truth makes you the center of the universe. If all you want is your own truth, you can have it; but you will need to spin a lot of large lies to maintain it. 

Perhaps something like this is happening in the parable of wheat and tares. Jesus begins by illustrating God’s truth and ends by mirroring back to us our own. He serves up two dishes and invites us to dine as we please, knowing that in the end we all eat our own judgments.

Jesus begins the parable by illustrating a wildly permissive God who lets the wheat and tares grow together. He invites us to do the same. A tare is a particular kind of weed that looks a lot like wheat. The farmer says, “Let both of them grow together. Don’t rip it out.” The implication here is that there is a way to sort all this out, but not with our methods of sorting things.

Paul Nuechterlein points out that the key word in the parable is “let,” aphete. It means “permit,” or “suffer.” It is also translated elsewhere in the New Testament as “forgive.” Whoa!

Yes, God permits evil, suffers evil, and forgives evil. This is the way of Jesus. This is the way of the Cross, and it paves the way for true justice – restorative justice. God’s judgment upon evil is… (are you ready for this?) mercy! The point is clear: attacking evil/tares will ruin everything, including the good/wheat. Using violence to cast out violence is like Satan casting out Satan. It doesn’t work.

Realizing that his teaching is a strong cup of coffee, Jesus changes tactics. Robert Farrar Capon suggests that in the second half of the parable, Jesus mirrors back to the crowd their own bloodthirsty orthodoxy. He gives them what they want (or think they want). Jesus makes it painfully clear to the disciples that the crowd’s truth ends in “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” We experience God the way we express our judgments. To people who are bound by their own judgment, God’s liberating truth seems like heresy.

P.S. Even in the face of overwhelming proof, it took 359 years for the church to recant its judgment on Galileo. It’s been more than 2,000 years and we are still struggling with the mercy of Christ. We should not be too hard on this. As Emily Dickinson said,

The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind – 

May we dine on God’s judgment, not our own.

Peace,
Kris Rocke
Street Psalms

Photo by Ronnie Pitman (CC BY-NC 2.0)

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
–Matthew 11:16-18, 28-30

On a terrace just off a smoky Kathmandu street, I sat in a circle with fellow aid workers gathered from across Asia. It was called a retreat – and for a number of us, it indeed felt like we had waved a white flag. We were beat. Wrapped in a blanket against the fog and chill, I stared into my little glass of chai. Vaguely I heard the visiting chaplain read some words of Jesus about yoke and a burden and felt my own gut sink brick-heavy with the sorrow and stress I had hauled to Nepal from many months in Bangkok slums.

“Churning, churning,” I wrote a friend later, of my stomach – which proved to be a wry premonition of the parasite I’d pick up later in the week. At the time though, the churning was set off by the words so jarringly dissonant from my recent experience: “easy” and “light.” BS, I thought. Nothing about what Jesus had invited me into had been remotely easy or light. I had been baited and switched; promised bread and given this stone. I pulled the blanket tighter and slumped further. The chaplain from Seattle was a good soul with an impossible task; we were too far gone to be cheered.

Over the course of the week our little group wandered along the streets and alleys of that extraordinary Himalayan town, sharing conversation over bowls of dal-bhat and snapping pictures like the tourists we didn’t quite admit we were. We talked with scraggy-bearded holy men and brightly-dressed market women. I bought a Tibetan prayer wheel, gave it a few spins, and wondered aloud whether it worked. As the days passed with my companions I noticed myself relaxing and even laughing. These were people carrying their own stones from hard places, but a lightness was rising among us.

What a gift, that week together! It would be years before I would find much better ways of weaving that communal gift of lightness into the fabric of all my days, rather than grasping for it as a patch of desperation after everything was in tatters. I would find it not only possible, but essential.

Later also, I would learn that “easy” is a particularly misleading translation of how Jesus described the yoke he offers. Scholars tell us a much better rendering would be “good,” even though it’s not the usual Greek word for good. It is good in the sense of “fitting” and “pleasingly useful.” “Christ’s yoke is like feathers to a bird; not loads, but helps to motion” (Jeremy Taylor). Unlike a poorly-fitted shoe, or dull knife, or bad eyeglasses, this yoke doesn’t strain. It suits. It befits its wearer. It outfits and equips the bearer for far greater service. Sure a person may need to grow into it, but with good growth it will fit better and better.

Such goodness of yoke and lightness of burden is cultivated in communities learning from Jesus that “the glory of God is humanity fully alive” (St. Irenaeus). In such community, we may come to discover that heavy stones we mistake for bread might not be what God intends us to carry at all. At the very least, we learn that burdens of any kind are not to be carried alone. We find rest for our souls and strength for good and fruitful work.

Coming to learn from Jesus, we see children in the streets of our cities playing make-believe. As kids do in their games, they imagine all the great range of human experience. Let’s make a funeral; you play dead and we’ll play the music. C’mon now, weep and wail everybody! Ok, now a wedding. You two be the bride and groom. Dance everybody! Hands in the air!

But some of us have quit dancing, or never did. We shuffle about in ill-fitting yokes carrying stones we mistook for something God dumped on us. We learn our ways of numbness and dissociation – lashing ourselves by addiction to an array of baggage straps that constrict and constrain. We grow dead to the music of the Spirit and to the life in our bones, neither dancing nor wailing. Anyone who dares to disrupt such addiction will suffer our cynicism or worse.

Jesus dares. Wear your own humanity as vibrantly as I wear my own, his story says. Freely open yourself to sorrow and joy, to life! Yes you’ve hurt – go ahead and wail. You’ve tasted happiness – sing! Dance when the music says dance, fling your limbs and shake your hair. Sure you’ll be called a demon or drunkard – but you’ll be in good company with that. You’ll survive and thrive. You will find this burden light – so much lighter than dreary numbness borne alone.

Your fully human self will suit you just fine, Jesus’ story says. Check in the mirror, you’ll see! Take a few steps. My good yoke will fit you so well that burdens you thought would crush you will not. Work you thought impossible, you will do. This fine yoke will harness you to others – and to me as your heart’s companion – in fruitfulness and delight.

Peace,
Scott Dewey
The Street Psalms Community

Photo: Nepal by Scott Dewey

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
–Matthew 28:16-20

At Street Psalms we talk about the message, method and manners of mission. Our message is the transforming love of God. Our method is incarnational, or as we often say, “from below.” And our manners have to do with a particular way of loving the world. Mission without manners is not just impolite – it sows seeds of violence.

This week’s lectionary text is the classic missionary text, especially for protestant mission. Many call it the “Great Commission,” as though Jesus himself coined the term. He didn’t. It was made popular by William Carey in the early 1800s. Carey was the founder of the Baptist Missionary Society and the father of modern protestant missions.

But let’s face it, our manner of mission has not always been so life-giving. History is littered with examples of missionaries who felt empowered by God to “make” disciples by any means necessary. Perhaps this is why Jesus warned us about our manners. “You cross sea and land to make a convert only to make them twice the sons and daughters of hell” (Matthew 23:15).  Clearly the Great Commission has been the occasion for much good.Many of the Western world’s great social concerns such as schools and hospitals originated through mission. A shining example of a well-mannered missionary is Bartolomé de las Casas, who was one of the first missionaries to the “New World.” He spent nearly 50 years of his life fighting slavery and the violent colonial abuse of indigenous peoples. Our Street Psalms network is filled with modern day Bartolomés.

Generosity: “Enough for all!”

A largeness of vision derived from God’s abundance – a willingness to risk big, fail often, forgive much, share much, and act freely in ways that transform our lives and the city.

Hospitality: “Room for all.”

A largeness of heart that sets welcoming and open tables for all and gives preferred seating to those at the margins – a willingness to welcome, invite, gather, network and serve others in ways that nurture ever-widening community.

Simplicity: “Limits for all.”

A largeness of soul that trusts, honors and discerns the limits and healthy boundaries of our gifts, call, roles, and responsibilities. We are free to say yes AND no to opportunities. This discipline is born out of deep trust in the boundless love of God and the Spirit’s unwavering commitment to bring all things to completion.

Vulnerability: “Risk in all”

A largeness of strength and courage that risks on the power of vulnerability. Martin Buber said, “All real life is meeting.” Such “meeting” is born of vulnerability that feels a lot like weakness. And yet vulnerability calls forth life, or as Brené Brown said, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”

Go, therefore…

Peace,
Kris Rocke
Street Psalms

Photo: Dresden to Go by Martin Fisch (CC BY-SA 2.0)

“Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father  except through me.”
–John 14:1-14

Do you remember Mark Twain’s famous experiment? He placed a cat and a dog in a cage and to his amazement they became friends. Encouraged, he added a rabbit, a fox, a goose, a squirrel, and even some doves and a monkey. They too became friends and lived in peace.

In another cage he put an Irish Catholic. When he seemed tame enough, Twain added a Scotch Presbyterian. Next he added a Turk and a Greek as well as an Armenian Christian, a Methodist, a Buddhist, a Brahman, and finally a Salvation Army Colonel.

“No one comes to the father except through me” (vs. 6). For many, Jesus’ statement raises one of those “theological details” that produces “a chaos of gory ends.” With all due respect to Mr. Twain, at Street Psalms we think real peace is possible, not in spite of the Christian faith, but because of it. We are exploring ways of lifting up Jesus without putting others down. We are practicing ways of following Jesus without excluding those who don’t. We are learning ways of being inclusive without diluting the Gospel into some milquetoast, undifferentiated, lukewarm soup. This is the genius of the Gospel Jesus preached even if it is not the Gospel we always practice.Twain left both cages for two days. When he came back, he found the animals still at peace. But in the cage of religious leaders he found, “A chaos of gory ends, of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh, not a specimen alive.” Twain concluded that the religious leaders disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

Sadly, when the Gospel of Jesus is treated as if it were some kind of exclusive real estate owned and occupied only by Christians, we reduce the faith to a Christian ghetto. And when we reduce it to specific creeds and doctrines, the ghetto shrinks even further to the size and shape of our particular denominations – most of which are dying. And when we reduce Jesus to merely a “personal Lord and savior,” the ghetto shrinks again to the size and shape of our own lives. The smaller the ghetto, the more we feel the need to defend it and fight for it. Such an approach produces a self-perpetuating cycle of violence born of scarcity.

Thank God, Jesus is not interested in Christian ghettos or any other kind of ghetto. The Gospel of Jesus is not the property of anyone. It is like an ever-growing, radically open and utterly free operating system that is making it possible for us to be fully human. Yes, Jesus is calling forth a new humanity, not a new religion. St. Irenaeus said it beautifully: “The glory of God is humanity fully alive.” This new humanity is born of God’s abundance and is brought into fullness by the way, and the truth and the life of Jesus. But what does this mean?

When Jesus says he is the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, he is not offering us an exclusive formula for salvation. He is stating a fact. Our way to the Father is the way, and the truth and the life of Jesus. And as it turns out, this way, truth, and life is God coming to us. Can we see? No one come to the Father. No one! Not Christians, not Jews, not Muslims, not Hindus, no one comes to the Father! The Father comes to us! God has come, is coming and will always come to us – This is the way, and the truth and the life of Jesus. There is no other way. The Gospel is the relentless download of love from the Father, who is always coming to us. We are all on the receiving end of a great gift.

God’s coming to us frees us from our gated ghettoes. It frees us from the rivalries that fuel violence. The way, truth and life of Jesus sets us free to become fully human and live in peace.

When we think of creation as an event that happened a long time ago in a garden far, far away, we can easily forget that creation is the ongoing activity of God, here and now, made visible through the resurrection.

In this week’s lectionary text of John 20:19-31, we see Jesus, the resurrected murder victim, re-creating the world and inviting us to participate in the ongoing act of creation.

1. “The doors… were locked… Jesus came and stood among them” (John 20:19).

The murder victim lovingly breaks into the locked prison of his disciples. Jesus returns as the Good Thief intent on taking only one thing. He comes to take away the sins of the world. This is not a violent break-in. It is a peaceful presence – a coming among us in a way that makes it clear Jesus has always been with us.

2. “Peace be with you” (vs.19).

Peace is the first word of new creation! Jesus doesn’t begin with a rant about how the disciples abandoned him and were complicit in his murder. Jesus begins by declaring peace.

3. “He showed them his hands and his side… then the disciples rejoiced” (vs. 20).

The murdered one shows his wounds. It is through Jesus’ wounds that the disciples recognize him. What’s odd is that they rejoice… not in the wounds themselves, but in the way Jesus becomes visible through them. Jesus is ALWAYS revealed as the wounded one. Jesus bears his wounds without resentment, vengeance, or wrath, and it’s in this way we recognize Jesus as the Christ. The wounded one does not shame us. Instead, he calls forth our deepest joy.

4. “Peace be with you” (vs. 21).

Jesus declares peace again. Wow, still no hint of resentment! The murdered one is filled with one reality… PEACE.

5. “As the Father sent me so I send you” (vs. 21).

Jesus commissions his disciples. He sends them out of their fear-filled prison the same way he entered – peacefully, as a Good Thief. We are commissioned to enter the prisons of this world in the same way Jesus enters ours.

6. “He Breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit” (vs. 22).

God animates creation with God’s breath. The Spirit (which means breath) breathed life into the watery chaos in Genesis. On the cross, Jesus released his last breath into the violent chaos of this world. And now in the Resurrection he breathes again into the disciples’ prisons of shame. Jesus breathes on us, in us, and through us the breath of life that we might become fully human and be one with God.

7. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (vs. 23).

The breath of life empowers the disciples to do what God does. This is the clincher. This is the whole point of receiving the Spirit. It is the whole point of the Gospel revelation. This is the reality that has been hidden since the foundation of the world (Matthew 13:35). It is so utterly simple that it is easily missed. God forgives! And we are invited to do the same.

Creation advances one way – through forgiveness! When we forgive, we participate in the ongoing work of Creation. To make the point more emphatically, Jesus reminds us that when we withhold forgiveness, we interrupt and diminish creation.

8. “But Thomas…” (vs. 24)

Thomas missed the big show. The absence of Thomas invites an encore presentation from Jesus. So, a week later Jesus breaks into another locked room, and once again declares peace, and once again shows his wounds (vs. 26-27). Once again there is sight.

Thomas comforts those of us who just don’t seem to get it, who are always late to the party, who refuse, reject, doubt, and deny. Such blessed ones call forth yet more grace and mercy from God. Interestingly, it is Thomas, the late-coming doubter, who not only touches the wounds of Jesus, but also offers the clearest, most personal declaration of Jesus in Scripture, “My Lord and my God” (vs. 28).

This passage is a foundational passage for us at Street Psalms. It has shaped our community as well as our training for many years now. We are ALL being re-created in Christ, especially the “least of these.” May this bring you joy.

Peace,
Kris Rocke
Street Psalms

Photo: “Doubting Thomas,” painting by Caravaggio

I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation. 
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone. 
This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. 
–Psalm 118:21-23

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
–Matthew 21:6-9

We select and reject, every minute. I am selecting and rejecting words as I type. I pay attention to this task and push others away. We sift and sort by the second and the hour and the year, consciously or not. You filtered a hundred bits of data in the moment it took to click on this email or click away.

In this most essential human process of sorting there are, obviously, rejects.

Scripture abounds with rejects, which is unremarkable in itself. The world abounds with scrap heaps also, which we often do our best to ignore. If the scraps prove hard to overlook, we push them out of sight more forcefully. If they won’t be pushed, they may need to be crushed.

What bears remarking is how rejected scraps in Scripture find their ways to the center. This image recurs: the discarded stone becomes the chief cornerstone. The castoff rock is strangely employed as the most important structural element – either to square off the building or as the capstone of an arch. This week’s lectionary Psalm (for Palm Sunday) depicts an unlikely king of ancient Judah expressing incredulous joy after an even more unlikely escape from military defeat and death. The lyric of the cornerstone becomes the chant of the victory parade in Jerusalem. The language is later picked up by Jesus about himself (Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17) as the one both rejected and chosen.

The stories of Jesus double down on this theme of castoffs. He tells stories of a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son. The gospel writers have him with rejected, overlooked, and even crushed people – proclaiming the realm of God to be among them. Nicodemus, one of the rare admirers with actual respectability, snuck in to see Jesus by cover of night.

Ok, but we builders know what we are doing. We are adept at selecting and rejecting to best effect. We construct our personas and societies and religion from the bright and beautiful as well as we can, with what is at hand. We can at least see when things are trending, lay palm branches in the road, and shout hosanna. We hitch our fortunes to what is winning and celebrate incredulously down the home stretch. As of course we should! Those were giddy days of acclaim in Jerusalem – both for David, and a millennium later for “the Son of David.

There is no mention that Jesus protested the fanfare, such as it was. But in a very short time, all that was overlooked in the jubilation would be bluntly revealed. The donkey, for starters, instead of a war horse. Within a week, desolation and death. This too is the “Lord’s doing,” the mercy, the marvel: precisely that after all shatterings, there is no shard so remotely cast off that it will not be reclaimed. Even death.

This gospel of rejects is the “way of salvation” hinted from the early pages of Scripture and revealed fully in Jesus. It’s at work in the world and in us. In our busy-ness building, are we paying attention?

Peace,
Scott Dewey
The Street Psalms Community

Photo: Palm Sunday 11 by Waiting For The Word

“Do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to…be seen by others…. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
–Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Christians world-wide will enter into a heightened time (40 days) of prayer, reflection, and spiritual companionship with Jesus to the cross. At Street Psalms we are grateful for this annual pilgrimage that awakens our heart to its own true desire.

In today’s lectionary text Jesus tells us not to give, fast, or pray like the “hypocrites” who put on a public show. This may sound harsh to our ears, but if we suspend the tone of judgment, Jesus is making a profoundly liberating observation.

The word hypocrite does not refer to a morally deceptive, hard-hearted person. Hypocrite means “actor.” In other words, don’t play to the crowd in your heart. If you do, the crowd will reward you as only crowds can. Crowds by their very nature are fickle and unstable. They shout “Hosanna” one day and “crucify him” the next. The capricious energy of the crowd is an intoxicating reward, which is why Jesus looked on crowds with compassion. But knowing and desiring far more nourishing rewards, he withdrew from crowds often – and invites us to do the same.

Who of us is not living our lives (to some degree) as if we were on stage, playing a part, locked inside a role we can’t seem to get out of? Some of us play the role of victor, others play the role of villain. Both are stuck and bound to the other in mutually destructive ways. This is why C.S. Lewis said the most fundamental prayer in life is, “May the real I meet the real Thou.” This is exactly what Jesus is getting at in this passage.

So, how does the real I meet the real Thou? How do we get off Broadway and into reality?

Mercifully, Jesus tells his disciples to go to their rooms and shut the door. What insight! What kindness! The inner room in the ancient Middle East was the equivalent of a pantry or larder where food was stored and preserved. It was located in the inner part of the house with no windows, only a door to seal it off.

In the inner room, we are free of the crowds who so easily rule and run us like puppets. In the inner room, we stop feeding on the unstable and fickle desires of the crowd and learn to borrow our desires from the One who desires us. The inner room is like a detox center that sobers the heart and awakens it to its deepest desires. It awakens us to the truth that our deepest desires are hidden in God, like a treasure. Yes, desire IS prayer! This is why Jesus wants us to follow it. He says, “Where your treasure is (think desire), there is your heart also.” So trust your desire and follow it come hell or high water to its origin. You will not only find God, but your own heart as well.

Lent is the invitation to the larder – to meet with God in the inner room of life and locate our heart’s desire inside the heart of the One who desires us. And our reward? The answer is already at work in us – all of us.

“trust your heart  
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward.)”
~ e.e. cummings, from the poem “Dive For Dreams“

Peace,
Street Psalms

“You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.”
–Matthew 5:13-14

In this week’s lectionary Gospel reading (Matthew 5:13-20), Jesus reminds us that we are salt and light. These are twin gifts of our deepest vocation – to be human. As salt we preserve humanity, especially among the dehumanized until they can occupy their own humanity more fully for themselves. As light we expose dehumanizing darkness by reflecting the glory of God. Isn’t this what Jesus does for us?

The public brief of David’ story is a 36-page litany of abuse and relentless trauma since childhood. There is no question that David is a danger to himself and perhaps sometimes to others, but solitary confinement multiplies his danger and further robs him of his humanity.Mary, a good friend and aspiring lawyer in Denver, has been working on a civil rights case with David. David is a 28-year-old mentally disabled man who is incarcerated at Colorado’s Centennial Correctional Facility, where he has been in solitary confinement since 2009. Mary and her team are challenging penal system’s inhumane treatment of David.

That declaration, which David signed just this past December, describes the mandatory physical restraints that lead him to anxiety-fueled self-harm behaviors, which in turn have kept David relegated to solitary confinement for the past five years.

“It’s hard for me to walk unrestrained already due to back pain, and ‘cuffing up’ forces me to take smaller steps and thus it’s hurting my back due to it’s an unnatural walk to me,” David says in the brief. “I wobble when I walk, i.e. nonlinear steps. This makes me feel like a dangerous animal that has no control, and that will attack anything that dares to glance at me. Which I’m not. I’m not sub human at all.” “It’s hard for me to walk unrestrained already due to back pain, and ‘cuffing up’ forces me to take smaller steps and thus it’s hurting my back due to it’s

Mary and her legal team are a beautiful example of salt and light. They are working to preserve David’s humanity, and also the humanity of individuals who detain him, while shedding light on the system of darkness that overwhelms David and others like him. In doing so, Mary and her colleagues are recovering their own humanity.

We often use the phrase that “the vulnerable are the face and grace of Jesus who return us to ourselves, clothed and in our right mind.” This is the gift of David. In preserving his humanity, he sheds light on our own.

Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Yes, Jesus is not merely concerned with shedding light, but also with how we shed light. We preserve our humanity and the humanity of others by mirroring the humanity of Jesus. Perhaps this is why the most frequently used title for Jesus in the Gospels is simply “the Son of man” – or more literally, “the human one.” To be fully human is to be salt and light, or as St. Irenaeus said, the glory of God is humanity fully alive. Yes, we reflect God’s glory (light) by being fully and completely human. Thank you David and thank you Mary for showing us the way.