2022.10.30 New Eyes. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The little story-snapshot in Luke’s gospel (19:1-10) reveals a lot about every age, specifically: What is revealed when we really look each other in the eye without averting. I’m not talking about staring, but simply catching the eye and meeting the heart.

*  * *  *

As the story goes, Zacchaeus, a wealthy tax collector, has heard about Jesus, this strange Teacher with a new vision. Zacchaeus is intensely curious. The story does NOT tell us why or what Zacchaeus is thinking, but as Jesus approaches Jericho, Zacchaeus climbs a Sycamore tree so he can see. (If you’ve ever seen a Sycamore, you know it can be a vast magnificent array of thick spreading branches— itself a symbol of reaching out to shelter and house each other.) 

Jesus, surrounded by eager followers, is headed for Jerusalem to confront authorities with his gospel of Love and social equity. In Israel one walks up hill to Jerusalem. Paths are rocky and the terrain rough. We’re not talking autobahn here. Jesus’s eyes would have been trained on his steps—looking down.

As the story goes, Zacchaeus looks down, and suddenly, without explanation, Jesus looks up. Their eyes meet—a powerful moment if you’ve ever experienced such a connection. From Jesus we, and they, expect a lecture about the needs of the poor, but NO. Jesus says: “Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down. I will be staying at your house today.”  Zacchaeus, stunned and “delighted” hops eagerly down from his hiding place. The crowds grumble about Jesus’s stupidity—staying at the house of such an obvious sinner, no less! But this is already a mutually transformative moment—a true meeting of the gaze. We know something good will come.  

                                        THE END. 

Luke, however, intent on persuading Gentile followers that Jesus is messiah, cannot resist adding his own coda: Zacchaeus, at this unexpected close-up encounter with Jesus, instantaneously, decides to give half of his great wealth away to the poor. 

Good for Zack, but really! 

Good for any zealous self-righteous preacher, but really! 

And good for Jesus for seeing something more than greed and hoard in those eyes. 

                                       FINALE

Try singing this verse by Michael Hudson in Songs for the Cycle. Fresh Hymn Texts, to the traditional tune for the Doxology.

One face looked up and one looked down,

and each saw in the other’s eye

both window for the grace of God

and reason not to pass it by.

2022.10.16 Importunity

Sometime you just need to give something, or someone, or yourself a kick in the butt—or a knock on the knuckles.

During my young and naive years, that is, before I hit the midlife skids, I’d sit in church pews, listen to the gospel parable called,“The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow (Lk.18) and think that “importunate” meant important. I’d wonder how a widow got to be so important—enough to change a high court judge’s decisions about who should be awarded damages and whom be denied. This judge was godless and corrupt—not motivated by justice at all. Still, a mere widow turned his head? She had to be a little important—even to him. 

After I found out that the word importunate means persistent to the point of annoyance and is derived from the Latin importunus meaning inconvenient or unseasonable, I still thought to myself: But a widow? Really, of all the weak sisters to choose as the star of a parable. But then Luke was probably encouraging the Gentiles to engage in importunity to get into the emergent early Christian church.   

I still wonder about widows. I often think about how much I do not want to become a widow—or any variation thereof. I have some female friends who are widows, one twice widowed, one divorced, remarried, then widowed, one too young and alive to be a widow, and one an aspiring widow. They are all lovely, loving, and wiser than ever.  In Scriptures, widows are plentiful and to be pitied, first on the list for charitable giving. The Indo-European root meaning of widow is be empty. Still, God loves them. 

I learned how to be importunate, thanks in part to this little widow and her unjust judge. Such nagging, near-bullying behavior, entered my behavioral repertoire as I was bounced about among a few bishops and committees just trying to be ordained in the Episcopal Church at a time when it was being beset by women—yes, some widows among them. Like the widow in the parable, women wanted justice. The fuel behind my importunity was anger—very far from self-righteous anger, because I knew my own sins and failings, but anger at feeling shut out. I’ve never like slammed doors, and feelings of shame, and fury boiling inside. The Episcopal Church turned out to be pretty lithe for an institution. It changed for justice's sake. 

Every story has transformative power, usually many layers of it, if you read it carefully, then let its many layers of meaning sink deeply into and under your own skin. Every story has its own brand of importunity. 

This biblical story ends with the punch line: “I tell you God will give them swift justice.”  

Still, I do not want to be a widow.   

2019.08.04 Who Taught You To Walk?

Today’s scripture readings began at home and continued in church.

Some people abstain from looking at the morning newspaper before they come to church to worship. They say it’s a practice that protects their minds and hearts from being stained by reports of violence, and more violence. Violence sells newspapers. It’s also a fact. I read the paper as I drank my morning coffee before I headed to church.

Today’s lead stories in the Boston Globe: One detailed more mass shooting in El Paso Texas and Dayton Ohio; another was about a man who buys then runs "sober houses" where recovering addicts get support and safety while they recover from the disease of addiction. Many of these places are unsafe, unclean, and extremely costly. Families of addicts empty their wallets and bank accounts in hope. Residents are instructed to stop taking any and all prescribed medications and “find a Higher Power.” Death happens, because God fails. Not only is this bad and errant theology, it is CRUEL THEOLOGY, motivated by greed camouflaged as health care treatment.

I longed for hope and different headlines. In church I heard more of the same about human behavior. AND, I also heard the voice of God speaking tenderly through the Old Testament prophet Hosea (11:1-11) about loving Israel as a parent loves a child from birth—embracing, leading with “cords of human kindness, bands of love,” teaching the child to walk, and, even when the beloved turns away, refusing to “execute fierce anger.” Why? “I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”

Nowhere is there a suggestion of divine abandonment or wrath. These are human fears only.

In Luke’s gospel story (12:13-21) there is a dispute about dividing the family inheritance. Money again! Someone in the crowd wants Jesus to instruct a brother to divide the family inheritance. Ah, the inheritance! Jesus replies: “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” Then he warns them to guard against “all kinds of greed”—ALL kinds. 

Then Jesus offers a parable about a rich man whose harvests are so abundant he has no place to store it all. He, notably, does not think of sharing but decides to build larger and larger barns to lay up his goods, saying: ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ Oh, how familiar this sounds today. This is not what I was hoping for. I felt as if I were reading the daily news reports. Are we in America now storing up every privilege, every claim to greatness, every imperialistic ostentation, every violent strategy (war), even reiterations of policies that equate compromise, aka diplomatic dialogue, with appeasement, aka losing?

What is God’s policy? Jesus tells the self-satisfied Soul in the parable what God, Creator of all wealth, said to the greedy Soul: “You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

It is left up to each one of us and all of us collectively to discern what being “rich toward God” means. (One of my ways is to counter cruel theology, even if it’s in scripture. It breeds spiritual poverty.)

May I gently suggest you remember who taught you to walk? Who let you fall down and who picked you up to try again with tender encouragement—all your life. Who loves you in spite of yourself?

Life is short. We do not have much time to gladden the hearts and minds of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind. Be rich toward God, O my Soul. Be rich.

2013.12.15 Christmas

"This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria..........."  So began the Christmas gospel, this year from Luke, telling the story of how Mary, pregnant with Jesus, and Joseph had to travel to their native town of Bethlehem to be registered for taxation. While there, something happened..........

This year, perhaps for the first time, Syria jumped out at me, a small part of the grand story. Syria in the midst of bombings, strife and civil war. I remember when we were in Israel in 2012 and we stood on a ridge overlooking the land so barren.  Our professor pointed to some mountains  in the distance and said, "That's Syria."

Syria not Bethlehem became the focus of my prayers. She is why God keeps on trying, in so many ways, to draw our attention to Love not War.