Stay with me on this. It is not an arcane point.

The framers of the United States Constitution were very aware of the history of Rome. They obviously borrowed heavily from the institutions and principles of the Roman Republic, yet they also worried about what happened to that Republic under Julius Caesar, and then Caesar Augustus. Namely, that it effectively became a kingdom; an empire; or, to use our founders’ word: tyranny.

Therefore they added checks and balances to power with the three branches, for example, and the First Amendment to establish freedom of speech.

What has any of this to do with the Gospel concerning Jesus the Christ (Christ is the same word as Messiah in a different language, and means ‘anointed’ and was commonly understood to apply to kings)? Only everything.

Luke’s Gospel begins by pointing out that Jesus’ birth occurred during the reign of Caesar Augustus. Who had shrewdly and methodically amassed power to himself and away from the Senate, which had formerly been the seat of supreme authority in the Republic.

It was Augustus who made Rome into a real kingdom. And not just a kingdom, but a kingdom of heaven and a kingdom of God. For stamped on Roman money--the coin of the realm--was his own image with the inscription: Divine Son of God (Divi Filius).

We cannot understand terms like “Son of God,” “Anointed One,” or “Kingdom of God,” that are applied to Jesus in the Gospels without this backdrop.

For they are terms of resistance. Of subversive protest. They are revolutionary. But not in the way of violent opposition. Rather, by way of illumination and transformation. The way of the heart.

There were violent revolutionaries among Jesus’ followers. They wanted to “call down fire” on adversaries. They wanted to take him by force and “make him king.” But he declined.

The stories say he was sorely tempted to gain power for his “kingdom.” That he was tempted on a mountain top; shown all “the kingdoms of the earth” and told they could be his. One catch: he must sell his soul to satan. He refused.

In a section of Matthew (16), Peter declares that Jesus is “the messiah (anointed one)”. Jesus says this is a divine insight, but should not be spoken of. Then Jesus declares he must suffer and die at the hands of Roman power. Peter objects, understandably. “This must never happen to you!”

Jesus recognizes in his words the same temptation as that of being offered kingdoms; real power. As self-serving. As satanic. As the way the seduction of power and control works...

It should strike us the same way whenever we see examples of the lust for power and control over others. Whenever we see people clearly amassing power unto themselves or desperately hanging on to it (no matter what the justification). And especially whenever we hear Jesus’ name invoked to bless power and control.

For the “kingship” and the “kingdom of God” of which Jesus spoke, and to which he adhered, belongs to children. It favors the poor. It welcomes the stranger. It lifts up the lowly. It heals and repairs and feeds and clothes and does not forget those in prison.

It is, in short, the opposite of worldly power and control. And according to Jesus, worth even dying for--in order not to lose one’s (or our collective) soul. But, rather, to truly live.

P. S. The word “republic” literally means “matter of the people.”

The question is usually not meant sincerely, but carries the implication that someone thinks much too highly of themself. Perhaps you have felt the sting of this question? Perhaps you have put it to another? Perhaps you’ve internalized the question and put it to yourself? “Just who do I think I am?”

In my experience, people do not need or benefit from “being taken down a notch,” or “being put in their place.” It seems to me that the people who project superiority are really operating from a deficit of self worth, not a surplus.

The real question here is not whether we evaluate ourselves and one another too highly or lowly, but whether we are engaging in evaluation at all. That is, whether we are attaching relative value to a living soul; most importantly with regard to ourselves. For value is not found outside ourselves, but comes from within. It cannot be conferred by others, but it can be recognized and affirmed by others.

There is a divine sacredness to each and every living soul--indeed to the entire world. This is the proper vantage point from which to ask the question, “Who do you think you are? Who do I think I am?” This is not to say that relative differences and distinctions among us are not important or valuable. But they do not comprise one’s value. Value is a given.

In one story, Yeshua asks his students, “Who do people say that I am?” They respond that people compare him to great and revered prophets like Elijah. “But who do you say that I am?” he asks.

Peter responds, “You are the Christ (meaning “anointed one), the son of the living God.” Yeshua receives and affirms this, and declares that this kind of insight comes as divine revelation.

If we read this story through the lens of comparative value among us, we could read it as a declaration of his superiority over all others. But what value is there in that? If, however, we recall that Yeshua came to identify with the lowly, the brokenhearted, and the most marginalized--to lift up, heal, and give heart--then we might see and affirm that all of us are invited to see ourselves (and others) as anointed; as children of the living God; as sacred beings.

Is that who we think we are? How might it change us to begin to recognize and affirm that as foundational and unshakable? It’s who I think you are...

In the story, Yeshua travels outside the borders of Israel to what is now Lebanon to the north. A woman of that region approaches him begging for help and mercy, for her daughter, she says is “tormented by a demon” (we might describe it as tormented by intrusive thoughts of self-harm and/or harm toward others, or perhaps profound depression--something like that).

Regardless, the condition is extreme and distressing. The woman makes herself vulnerable by approaching. She is not a Jew. She is Syrophoenician. In Matthew she is called “Canaanite,” a much older label used to evoke the historical animosity and conflict between the two peoples: Israelites and Canaanites (see the books Joshua 6-12, Deuteronomy 7 and 20, and Leviticus 17 which condemn Canaanites as a whole).

First, Yeshua ignores her. His disciples urge him to send her away, for she pleading and pleading loudly. Yeshua finally responds, saying “I came here only for the scattered sheep of the house of Israel (in other words only for the Jewish people living as aliens in that region).

She persists. She kneels before him: “Lord, help me.” Can you picture her anguish? A mother for her child?

This is not Yeshua’s finest moment. He speaks to her with an analogy: “It is not right to throw the children’s’ food to the dogs.”

Sit with this for a moment. Forget what may have motivated Yeshua to say this. Think of this mother, begging for help for her child. Only to be told that her daughter is not a child but a dog--as is she. Less than fully human. Unworthy of divine mercy.

Now the miraculous happens. Her love is so great that she takes the insult and puts it back to him: “Yes, but even the dogs get scraps from the table.”

Yeshua seems cut to the heart. Astonished, he looks at her and calls her “great in faith.”

Matthew writes, as we know, for a primarily Jewish audience. The story addresses centuries of hatred, prejudice, and othering toward “foreign” neighbors. Considering them as a whole outside the circle of their (and God’s) concern. A history marked by violence.

Masterfully, I think, Matthew illustrates the possibility and necessity of a kind of healing and transformation that overcomes the othering we do in relation to people-groups. Regarding “them” as alien. Unworthy. Even less than human.

It is a painful process. It’s a disturbing story. The roots of suffering need to be faced and acknowledged. Yeshua and disciples needed healing as badly as the woman and child, though they could only come to see it through an authentic, real encounter. The healing, then, was mutual. The girl was made well. The men were humbled and changed.

This is a story that Thomas Jefferson dismissed as primitive nonsense, along with all other “miracle stories” in the Bible, and he simply cut them out with a scissors.

Jefferson was a towering figure in the emerging age of reason and rationalism, and understandably worried about how religion promoted anti-rational superstitions.

In fact, the very thing he worried about was also the product of the new age of rationality. People were beginning to insist that bible stories be understood as historical facts, an idea that is different from how composers and compilers of the biblical literature understood their stories. No, in the ancient world, transmitters of the great stories freely elaborated, embellished, and even changed stories more like artists and poets, trusting that their own imagination was welcome (inspired) in the transmission of truth.

The Bible is full of examples of this kind of elaboration, both in the Torah, and in the Gospels. “Literalism” as we like to call it, is a more modern problem, not an ancient one. Jefferson’s concern was valid, but to dismiss the fantastic parts of the text robs us of what I believe the writers wished to convey: astonishment, and a larger-than-life image that is unforgettable. Think of the story of the Trojan Horse. It is fantastic. Did there need to be an actual wooden horse big enough to hold the invading army in order for us to remember and learn from it?

(By the way, there is no harm in thinking these things happened historically, as long as there is room for others who think differently... and that seems to be a big “if.”)

Miracle stories are astonishing, literally. They disturb our normal assumptions and ways of seeing in the world. “How can this be?” we wonder. This is wonder-ful. Full of wonder.

The story conveys astonishment. The disciples, when they see Jesus walking toward them, in the storm, on top of the water, are astonished. We might say “freaked out.” This was not normal. It was extraordinary.

So much so, that one need never have read the bible to know what it means to say, “She walks on water.”

We live with too little astonishment in our rationalist age. Life is astonishing continually! Just the fact of being alive is astonishing. Children and wise people know this, and are in tune with it--even in the most ordinary things. Birth and death are moments that jar us to a sense of awe. Yet everything in between is awe-some for those with eyes to see. Every moment, every creative act, every insight, every experience of love, every creature is an expression of divine power and love.

In the story, Peter wants to try walking on water. He gets out of the boat and it works! For a moment. Then fear causes him to sink. He could not trust what was happening, and returned to his habitual assumptions about what is, and is not, possible.

Back to Jefferson. There’s a story about him where he observed Baptist preachers speaking publicly on the commons. They were arrested and jailed because in Virginia only Anglican ministers were authorized to preach publicly. Jefferson, who disliked Baptist religion intensely, decided to write an amendment to the freshly minted Constitution. It became what is known as the First Amendment, protecting freedom of speech and freedom of religion from government control, even (perhaps especially) for those with whom he disagreed.

In that moment, I believe, despite his many flaws, Thomas Jefferson walked on water. It was an astonishing act of love and trust. You and I too have this potential. That’s the truth.

These two words are linked, prophet and profit, not only by sounding the same, but in the Bible.

Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures were watchdogs for justice, equity, and inclusion (JEI?). They spoke truth to power, often at their own peril. Crying out on behalf of the poor, the disenfranchised, the foreign resident, the widows, and the orphans. In short, on behalf of those with little or no power.

This was never popular and always dangerous. It got many of them killed. Yet they were simply speaking out, appealing to the rulers and the people to honor and abide by the basic terms of their sacred Covenant. That of the Torah: to defend the widow, orphan, stranger--the most vulnerable--from exploitation, neglect, or harm.

What stood in their way? Profits. Whether money, power, land, prestige, or renown. Profits. Yeshua summed up this opposition in a sentence: What does it profit someone to gain the whole world and to lose one’s soul?

This is prophetic.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision. From it he spoke:

Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats.
When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more!
Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation-- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil;
learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.

In the context of that time, as well as in our own, this should read like nails across a chalkboard. Isaiah is not addressing Sodom and Gomorrah, but is accusing his own people of acting like those mythic/evil cities. Speaking for God, he says their worship, rituals, and sacrifices are detestable because they ignore the most basic thing.

All that matters, according to our most holy human covenant of mutual existence (expressed across traditions) is to love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19.18). If that does not extend to the stranger in our land, the widow, the orphan--in short, to the most vulnerable among us--we are at odds with Love.

No matter what we imagine it profits us.

Let’s not leave it there, however. What the Prophets are attempting to remind us of with harsh language is nothing more than our true nature. For no one’s heart is transformed by threats and accusations. It happens from within. It happens by grace. When we are released from the prisons we make for ourselves that we thought were palaces and fortresses.

The true prophets can speak for God because they speak to and for all of us. They do so from the perspective of the lowliest and least powerful among us. It confronts, but more importantly it reminds us of what we are made to be.

Otherwise, why would Yeshua have declared, “I was in prison and you visited me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you cared for me?” It is both judgment and invitation. Grace.

But what do we really “have?” How is it we “have” anything? And what is the “I” that “has” all these things? Possession/ownership is but an illusion. As is the notion of an independent self. All life and all living beings exists as a shared experience.

Yeshua fed people--in one case 5000 people with just a few fish and a little bread. With leftovers! But this miraculous abundance did not come out of thin air. It involved sharing resources, cooperation, and organizing.

Feeding one another/sharing food is a sign, a symbol, a teaching about life. It is the universal symbol of community. It runs counter to the idea of possessing. For food cannot happen without gifts of the earth, sharing skills, generosity, collaboration--all of which are miraculous and ordinary at the same time.

This is why holy communion is central to our ritual gathering--the ordinary bread and wine is sacred as it is shared and eaten--together.

We feed people at Zion. Three separate times each week. Hundreds of people. We are feeding each other. Some can donate toward the purchase of food. Others can’t. All of us together--only together--can make this work. Our weekly food programs are deeply spiritual and physical at the same time. They are holy communion also. They nourish people. They create community.

Life is found not in having, but in sharing. All of life is sharing. Merely to breathe is to share. Even to think is to share. Sharing is the true fabric of reality. It is the nature of love. This is fullness of life.

It has been said that, “Whatever has our attention has us.” And this is true. Capturing and holding our attention is worth billions of dollars to companies in our digital age.

I read recently that to spend one day in New York City is to be exposed to roughly 10,000 discreet attempts to grab our attention. Even in a more natural setting, our ability to perceive or take in the amount of information within reach of our senses is quite limited. One estimate is that it would take our minds 80 years to attend to all the bits of information coming to us in 60 seconds.

Our attention is precious not only because it is for sale in the marketplace and because it can only attend to few of the myriad possibilities available to us in any moment, but because it is a source of joy. What?

When we give our full attention to someone or something we become fully present with them, and these are moments we feel fully alive. I carry many memories and pictures of this with me. My mom, an artist, in her white painting shirt covered with colorful smears, at her art table. My (then) five year old daughter in a party hat, drawing something so intently she did not notice we snapped her photo. Last Wednesday at City Hall in St. Paul, dozens of neighbors speaking to city officials with clarity and passion for more humane policies for unhoused neighbors. Any time I have experienced either giving or receiving full attention to or from someone.

The joy of gathered, focused attention is not the same as pleasure, though often it may be pleasurable. It is a gift to be absorbed in something good; a sense of transcendence while also rooted in the here and now.

Yeshua tells a story about a merchant in search of a single pearl of great value. He searches until he finds it, and when he does he goes and sells all he has in order to purchase it--with joy!

It is one image of what he calls the kingdom of heaven. It is like that. For what we truly are seeking, what deserves our full and constant attention, is no one thing, activity, or person, but may include all sorts of them. The pearl of great price is the grace and gift of being an authentic human soul, transformed in Love. There is no greater joy.

It is not something to obtain; but to receive. It is worth everything, for it is the worth in everything. It is the experience of Divine Presence, Eternal Life and Love, as our own presence in all that we do.

And it only grows according to the attention we give to this precious pearl, perhaps while holding a crayon, a microphone, spatula, a hammer, a gaze, a blade of grass, or a hand...

One of my most wise and dear friends would say this. It was always in response to some conversation about something distressing. Something about which we are inclined to make judgments. Something we might agree should not have happened: enmity, abuse, injustice, betrayal, despair, and hurt. More deeply, he meant that what is happening “out there” is always a reflection of what is happening in the human heart; our hearts. Where weeds and wheat are both sown and grow.

He refers to the parable of Jesus where someone sows good seeds in a field, but an enemy comes and sows entangling weeds in that field by night. Now they are growing together. The laborers want to pull up the weeds, but the wise farmer says, “No, for in pulling up the weeds, you will pull up the wheat also.” So wait. Be patient. It cannot be sorted out until harvest, in the end.

Meanwhile, it is galling that the weeds are using the same nutrients and soil! Good hearted laborers are understandably indignant. Ah, but now the roots are entangled. You can’t untangle them and sort it out without killing what is good.

So it is in our world, and so it is with ourselves. “Weeds and wheat.” Entangled. Suffering is not a straightforward problem. We can’t root it out by doing this or that. Even on a mass-scale. The mystery is the entanglement beneath the surface. Surface answers will not suffice.

Yet patience is not passivity. To grow, and to help grow is not passive. It is active, and active with trust that life is meaningful because of love. Weeds, and all that sow them seek life that is not life; seek gain at the expense of others. Any and all of us can be caught up in this--it is common in our world, and is called “winning.”

In the end, it yields nothing. It is burned up in the eternal fire of love that is God. Only love, and what is done in love remains. In the meantime: patience; meaning practice, intention, awareness, presence. Good gathers the good to itself. This is not winning, but compassion. There is good in everyone. We get to be part of that growth, no matter how dire anything seems...

Luke (14) portrays Yeshua saying, “None of you can be my disciple if you do not give up all of your possessions.”

As if that isn’t a harsh enough saying, it is preceded by: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even one’s own soul, cannot be my disciple.”

This cannot be right, can it? What kind of horrible choice is this? It seems like a call to fanaticism. A leader demanding absolute loyalty and devotion, with the demand that no other love or care can be allowed to compete. They must become dead to you. Else you are not worthy.

We are familiar with this dynamic, practiced by cult-leaders throughout history. Also by domestic abusers wanting total power and control.

Is that what this is?

It is worth questioning. Moreover, it is worth inquiring into our experience in relation to this text.

For those of us who have experienced manipulation and control--the demand for absolute submission, fealty, and secrecy, this passage likely awakens that trauma--understandably. This may well not be a helpful passage for you at all.

Yet if we are inclined to trust that Yeshua was deeply guided by his words in John, “I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly,” then we might be able to inquire more about it.

Notice the direct connection between family relations and possessions. Some kind of rejection is clearly being taught--of both family and possessions.

How on earth is this related to more abundant life? Is it not the opposite?

Unless.

Unless what Yeshua is pointing to is not that people in our lives must be rejected, nor useful things in our lives, but possessing itself. What if the source of so much of our suffering (and causing suffering) is possessing? Or, as our Buddhist friends might say, our attachments?

And what if the example of family is meant to disturb us in such a way that we might begin to see how our most cherished relationships, those whom we love, can become objects of our desires, and therefore imagine as our possessions--mine?

And what if this kind of attachment is a hindrance both to their freedom to be entirely themselves, and ours also? Automatically becoming a form of possession and control?

Even more deeply, what if this tendency in us is rooted in a very mistaken sense of self--of who and what we imagine ourselves to be? For who really owns or possesses anything? Such an imagination is an overt denial of our material impermanence here, is it not? Are we not all just passing guests? Passing through?

This invites a level of detachment. But not utter detachment. For in this freedom from possessing, there is freedom to care, to love, to be here for one another--every other, to share, to pursue the common good, the welfare of all. With an expansiveness that is not limited by notions of “mine.”

In this way, these words of Yeshua could become an invitation to freedom, rather than egoistic demand/coercion; to life experienced more abundantly.

Before leaping to a metaphorical interpretation about faith or the condition of our hearts to receive truth, I want to stay with the image. It is about a sower who sows seeds everywhere (one might say foolishly or wastefully). Seeds bear life, and in this parable they are strewn everywhere. But seeds do not grow without reciprocity: they need good soil, sunlight, water, and air. Seeds cannot grow on their own. Impossible. Nor do they simply need assistance to grow. Seeds, soil, water, sunlight, nutrients, CO2, and a billion other contributing relationships become something new that gives back many fold, in nourishment and more seeds.

Nature works according to an economy of gift. Seeds of life strewn everywhere. Abundance is the basic principle of life. Some seeds die. Some live. It is only when essential relationships form, relationships of genuine mutuality, that things grow. Transformation occurs. Nothing is the same. New life happens. Abundance continues. New seeds to be strewn.

Last year a neighbor came to Zion for the Community Meal. She couldn’t eat some of the food, since she has no teeth anymore. She appreciated what she could. Then she said, “A while back I took a big tomato from the Thursday food give-away. It was the last one, and it was getting old. So I took it home and removed the seeds. I put them on toilet paper to dry them. Then I planted them. Now they are small plants. Can I plant them in your community garden in the courtyard?” Of course, the answer was “yes.”

Her tomato plants grew (like crazy) from tomato seeds rescued from being thrown away. Nurtured and given back with love and appreciation to nourish others.

Somehow, seed, soil, love, nourishment, interdependence, relationship, love, kingdom of heaven, all are right before us to receive and in which to not just survive but flourish.

Why? Because he saw value in people regarded as unworthy; without any value.

He saw value. This does not mean he valued them, as in he bestowed value on them with his countenance. It means something more fundamental: that their value was inherent. That value is not something anyone bestows on anyone or anything else. Value is not something we have, it is what we are. All of us. Value is recognized, not bestowed.

Yeshua chose to be with those on the margins of society. The outcast and the downcast. “Sinners” literally means those who have missed the mark. Who is not that? Yet these were judged unworthy and beyond the pale. Therefore unrespectable. Every society in human history defines their own sinners.

Tax collectors are especially interesting. They were fellow Jews working for the occupying Roman empire. They were complicit in oppression. They were turncoats in the eyes of many. They were understandably despised. Yeshua welcomed them.

Why? Because Value. Value is inherent to all beings.

This does not provide easy answers about how to relate to specific people, groups, or parties we oppose, distrust, or even fear. What it does is change the way we fundamentally see them, and ourselves, in relation to our shared essential value.

These are difficult questions without easy answers. Yet to me, this story about Yeshua welcoming such people and being castigated for it has more fundamentally to do with how we regard ourselves. How do we value (evaluate) ourselves? For does not how we regard ourselves shape how we regard others?

Could it be that this story about Yeshua could be received as an invitation first to welcome ourselves? For all our missteps, complicity in what is wrong or harmful, and shame? Could it be this is a story about the value that is unconditional and that belongs to every being and cannot be lost? Is this about us, not them?

Does this not turn the tables on our normal ways of judging one another? Might this be the kind of transformation we truly seek in our own souls and in our world--a treasure so easily lost? The realization of essential value in every other, and in ourselves?

His grandfather returned from the war and became a brilliant teacher and theologian (as is my friend) in Chicago. He wrote years later that his experience at the Front was a direct consequence, writ large, of the "fronts" we put up interpersonally. The ways in which we hide behind a false image of ourselves, rather than engage in genuine relation with others in common humanity. (Let me be quick to note: Sometimes a false front is necessary for survival, as in an abusive situation.)

This deeply moved me. I heard the truth in it immediately. For me.

A front, whether in war or personally, creates a border, a chasm between us and them. Even if that border is anywhere and everywhere. The other is inevitably dehumanized in our minds. 

In the Gospel of Luke, Yeshua describes an uncrossable border or chasm between the rich and the poor of this world. He repeatedly warns against the peril of this chasm, especially for the rich. For, in creating this chasm by grasping for money and power, one loses one's soul, while the poor suffer temporarily, though severely, miserably, and needlessly.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (literally "God is my help") is central to Yeshua's teaching in Luke (16). Lazarus lies outside the gate of the rich man's palace. He longs for scraps from the rich man's table where he feasts sumptuously every day. Lazarus is covered in sores that he is helpless to prevent feral dogs from from licking. Both the rich man and Lazarus die--the great equalizer for us all--and Lazarus is taken by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man is in Hades. And between them is a wide chasm no one can cross.

The rich man pleads with Abraham to "send Lazarus"--note the continued corrupt privilege--for a bit of water. But the chasm can't be crossed. Then he asks Abraham to "send Lazarus" to warn his brothers about the consequences of his own greed and neglect. Abraham refuses: They have ample warning from Moses and the Prophets in this matter. "They will not listen, even if someone rises from the dead to tell them."

Luke here boldly proclaims that the lure of wealth, power, and great possessions is too great for even the resurrection of Christ, the teacher of this parable, to penetrate.

The Front and the great chasm between Fronts begins at the interpersonal level and becomes societal, corporate, and national. As Yeshua says just a few verses earlier, "You cannot serve God and Wealth." Whether you are a nation or a human being. For God is in your neighbor. And your neighbor's welfare is your own. 

Let this be a warning to all of us. The consequence of ignoring it is war. Nobody wins. However, there is a gracious invitation: toward an economy (literally "household") of mutual care and concern. In which large chasms are crossed and collapsed. In which your life is my life, in relation, as our life. 

References: Dr. David Hawkinson and his grandfather, Dr. Eric G. Hawkinson; Dr. Ched Myers, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke's Jesus and Sabbath Economics 

This was the most intense period of Operation Metro Surge. Renee Good and Alex Pretti had been shot and killed. Since the beginning of federal occupation by ICE and CPB troops, Zion had become a hub of food distribution to neighbors afraid to go outside to shop, go to work, or go to school. Hundreds of volunteers rallied to Zion Community Commons to fill grocery grocery bags and distribute diapers and hygiene products.

When I got to Zion the news was grim. A driver leaving Zion with a van load of food had been pulled over at gunpoint by federal officers, not far from Zion. He was told they knew he had gotten food from “that little church on the corner,” that we were “obstructing a federal operation,” and that if they saw him again they would “smash all the food in the street.” Then they let him go, traumatized by the experience.

At that point we planned for the worst. What was our plan if Zion got raided by federal officers? What were our legal rights? How do we keep people safe? We had no direct contact with federal officers after that. But as I have shared the story, the almost universal reaction has been, “They did this because you were sharing food?”

And I recalled Yeshua’s words, “Whoever shares even a cup of water with a little one in my name will not be unrewarded.” This is all we were doing, and continue to do. Sharing. Which is highly rewarding, no matter what the cost or consequence for ourselves. For to share freely is in our true nature. It is freeing.

Yeshua makes this comment (according to Matthew 10) at the end of stern words to his followers. He indicates that to continue to follow him is going to cost them big time. It will cost family ties. It will perhaps even cost their lives. So unless they are willing “to take up their own cross,” they should not follow anymore.

And then he comes to his (surprising) concluding point: “Whoever offers even a cup of cold water to one of these children will be rewarded.”

Think on this. At the end of this solemn and sobering instruction to his disciples about being prepared to suffer great loss for his sake, he reminds them what they are all about in a very small, humble metaphor: To share a cup of water with a child.

This is what it is to follow the Truth, no matter whether Jesus is named explicitly or not. It is the same Spirit.

We should know, however, that to live in this way, to freely share only because we are fellow beings, without expecting return, can run afoul of powerful interests. And does. It did in Yeshua’s case, and it has in ours.

“Because you are feeding people??!!” Yes, just exactly because we are feeding people: “The wrong people.”

And that made it right. And true. And authentic. And rewarding. Highly costly, and highly rewarding.

Care to share in this cup of cold water?

What does this look like? Feel like?

Sorry to say, it can feel like weakness, loss, illness, sadness, and decay. It feels scary. It is the experience of losing our life. Or what we had considered to be our life. It is in the letting-go that we become open to receive something greater, eternal, and fulfilling. The experience that God-is-Love. And that this is the heart of our very being.

Whatever it takes to surrender in trust to this truth is worth it. Every “end of our rope” is this opportunity. Every “I can’t stand it” is this opportunity. Every “I am worthless” is this opportunity. There is nothing greater or more wonder-full. It is meant to be.

Rumi wrote: “Lose yourself. Lose yourself in this love. When you lose yourself in this love, you will find everything.”

Yeshua said, “To love (cling to) your life is to lose it. To lose yourself is to find it in eternal life.” He said this after he invited them to “take up their cross and follow.” So to follow is a continual rhythm of losing our lives to find them. And that looks like: loving our neighbors as our very selves, loving even enemies, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, being a healing presence, bearing good news for the poor, giving without expecting return, and so on. And to find joy in so-doing because the love we find is beyond compare with what we lose.

This is the way, the truth, and the life. Losing oneself only to find one’s true self in God-Is-Love.

Something new is happening. Always happening. Not just new, but renewing for those who receive it and share it. It cannot be captured in a headline or a book. It is, rather, lived and demonstrated.

I witnessed good news at our Thursday food distribution when someone with no money or even stable housing herself noticed a neighbor whose shoes were completely worn through. She pointed it out to me, and my immediate reaction was to explain that we cannot meet all the needs of people who come for food, but we can feed them, and that is something.

Undaunted by my “scarcity” mentality, she asked if she could take up a collection to buy him shoes, and would I be willing to ask him if it was ok and his shoe size. I did, and he replied “yes,” without hesitation, and that he wears size 15.

Within minutes she raised the money to purchase new shoes for him. Someone without means, yet a heart flowing with generosity, moved us to share in that flow of generosity and abundance.

Yeshua taught and demonstrated this good news of abundance rather than scarcity. He healed the sick and fed the crowds, with nothing but the profound awareness of what is possible when we become part of the divine will to heal and to continually renew. He directed his students to go and do the same.

This he called the “kingdom of God,” and he called it that to make mockery of the established kingdom in which they lived. One built on power over people. On domination. In our day, we might describe the kingdom of God as the “economy of God.” Since in our economics the will to dominate and accumulate is seen as leading to success.

There is a different economy that is always near at hand. In it we come to understand the radical (revolutionary) self-giving that is at the same time receiving abundantly. This is in accord with our truest and deepest nature, yet it is also scary. Is there enough? There is never, never enough to satisfy our grasping sense of insecurity and scarcity. We can only let go of it.

That is liberating. Good news. And new shoes...

You can’t serve God and money.

So says Yeshua in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6.24. It is absolutely true and should be more clear to us now than it was then. Never before has the world seen the kind of up flow and accumulation of wealth into the hands of the few. With disastrous consequences for the many, from whom available resources are extracted or denied.

When people, left or right, cry out that the system is rigged, they are accurate. For Yeshua is not simply speaking of personal morality. He is addressing a human system that incentivises and richly rewards the single minded pursuit of wealth. That is the system in which we live. The rich get richer... But at what expense to the common good?

In the text for this Sunday, Matthew 9.9-13; 18-26, there are three miracles. The second two are healings. A young girl is raised from death, and a woman is healed from a 12 year “flow of blood.” Pretty remarkable, and a profound grace.

But the first miracle is at least as profound and healing. Yeshua calls Matthew, a tax collector, away from his business to come follow. And Matthew does.

Tax collectors like him worked with the incentive not merely to collect a set amount, but had a quota, beyond which they could pocket as much as they could extract. This is how the Roman government insured it would receive it’s “due,” and why someone like Matthew would work hard to get every penny possible from the people.

For this reason, tax collectors were widely despised and seen as traitors by their neighbors. But this is what serving money looks like. It incentivises people by the promise of wealth--away from loving our neighbors.

The miracle is that Matthew dropped out and left that system, with it’s values, behind. Yeshua called him out, and he left to follow true riches. To be in the company of healers instead of extractors. In so doing he is healed, set free. He’s in flow with a different economy; one of shared abundance, generosity, gift, compassion, and the common good.

That of loving and serving neighbors. For in this is found treasure that can’t be lost or stolen, ever.

At no time or place in recorded human history has the notion that we are all, basically and ultimately individuals become so believed and celebrated as it is today. While it is true that we are individual people, that is neither the most basic nor ultimate truth.

If that were the case, no one would breathe, or eat, or even be born. Interdependence is not even a strong enough word to describe our being here. Interbeing is the condition of our existence.

Many of us have found refreshment, even healing in spiritual traditions that locate personal identity not in ourselves as individuals, but in relation. Not just in our inter-personal relationships, but in relation to all that is.

For a while, we saw bumper stickers with a translation of the typical greeting of the Maasai people of East Africa: “And how are the children?” The contrast with our typical greeting, “How are you?” is striking.

In the Dakota language, Mitákuye Oyás’iƞ is a sacred phrase translated “All My Relatives,” not meaning what most of us would mean when we say “all my relatives” (MY family), but that all are my relatives, including the entire natural world and everything in it. It is a ritual confession of our essential interbeing as one family from the Great Spirit.

To celebrate individuality is in no way a bad thing. But the imbalanced belief in ourselves as individuals has resulted in sickness. In competition over cooperation; in violence to solve problems; in runaway environmental degradation; in extreme wealth inequality; in identity politics; in hostile divisions; in epidemic loneliness; in growing mental un-health in our children...

There is a better way, and it is right in front of us.

It is the growing awareness of our essential interbeing, and this is happening because it is simply the truth that always has been and will be. And it is at the core of Christian tradition as well: in the creation of all from one; in Yeshua’s summary teaching to “love your neighbor as your very self”; in his teaching that he exists “in the Father” and the Father in him and that the same is true of all of us; in the call of the prophets to collectively care for the most vulnerable; and in the teaching of the Trinity. Wait, what? The Trinity??

One God in three persons is a classic formulation of the Trinity. As a doctrine to describe a God we believe in with our minds is not helpful. For it posits a God who is a certain sort of being separate from us.

Yet if we see it as pointing to the reality of interbeing, and that this is the nature of Being itself, then it is an invitation to living in a profound sense of shared being. To experience Divine Life in everyone and everything. It suggests that God is in community; in relation. Both one, and many.

If this seems esoteric, consider how different our collective value system would be if we did not just put “How Are the Children” on our bumpers, but organized our life together accordingly? How are the elders? How are the poor? How is the working class? How are the homeless? How are all our relatives? How are we together?

For all are my relations. Interbeing or shared-being is the way God is and the way we are. To lose sight of this makes us all sick. But our unhappiest symptoms are also a blessing to awaken us to the need for and possibility of healing, by God’s entirely present grace...

We do not live a life, we share Life.

Footnote: Credit for coining the word interbeing must be given to the marvelous teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh who wrote a book by that title from his experience “under the bombs” in Vietnam; and as a peace activist, poet, Buddhist monk, and healer of souls.

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give. Let not your hearts be troubled nor full of dread.” (John 14.27)

What is this peace? Clearly it is not merely circumstantial and does not depend on an outward state of affairs we might call “peaceful.”

This peace is an inner experience--of the heart--that dissolves the common and debilitating fears that arise in us.

Dread and fear have to do with how we perceive our lives and dangers to them. We tend to think we are essentially “on our own.” Yes, with relationships of course, but in essence we imagine ourselves to be individuals. Separate from one another. And this gives rise to dread: “What will become of me?”

But listen to Yeshua’s teaching: “You will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (John 14.20)

The nature of our being is inter-being. We are one with the totality of being. That is what we are. To use Yeshua’s language, we are in one another, and together in God, who also lives in us. Like waves on the ocean, distinguishable, yet one ocean.

I like these words by Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota elder in 1933:

“From Wakan Tanka (Great Spirit) there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things – the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals--and was the same force that had been breathed into the first human. Thus all things were kindred and brought together by the same Great Mystery.”

Peace.

This moment is just right. Not meaning that everything is right or just or fair or good. But simply that it is the right time to be right here; right now. It is the opportune moment. No matter what happened to bring us to this moment. No matter how we feel about it, or what a mess we think it is.

We often find ourselves resisting what cannot be changed. We think, “It should not be this way!” “I should not be this way!” This is self-inflicted suffering.

We suffer needlessly when we resist, avoid, or rage against what is happening in the moment. We all do this to one degree or another. I certainly do.

The present circumstances we find ourselves in cannot be changed. We can, however, change our relationship to them, and therefore deeply change how everything unfolds going forward.

This moment, no matter what, is the perfect moment. No matter what has happened; no matter what others or we have done or failed to do, no matter what may come of it; no matter how we feel about it. It is the exact and precise moment we have been given to work with. And the word “with” is key, rather than “against.”

No matter what, we can love. No matter what, we can embrace our neighbor. No matter what, we can accept ourselves for exactly who and where we are right now. No matter what, we can do something that transforms ourselves and the world around us.

“Now is the acceptable time,” writes Paul in 2 Corinthians 6.2. He is talking about the grace of reconciliation. With others, yes, but first within ourselves in this moment.

I spoke with someone who told me he hated himself for what he had done as a soldier in war. That he would never forgive himself. In his mind he has ruined any chance to be acceptable now; any chance to accept that the present moment, given his past, is just right. So on top of everything, he cannot move on and heal, at least yet. But the next moment and every moment are still just right.

It is called grace when we can let go of our heavy burdens of judgment, regret, and disappointment and see that this moment, exactly as it is (and as we are) is just the right one for us now.

This phrase is found in Acts 17.28 as part of a speech given by the Apostle Paul in which he also declares God to be beyond human imagination.

Ideas about God abound. Part of my own long study has been to consider all different ways that people past and present speak of and imagine “God.” Some are trite, like “the Man Upstairs.” Some are quite sublime and truer: “God is Love.” “God is the Ground of Being.”

Ultimately, all definitions, names, or ways to imagine fall short, and whatever we imagine when we say “God” is inadequate. We are left with a mystery that our thoughts cannot grasp.

Paul says to people in Athens, “In God we live and move and have our being” (quoting a well known poem/prayer by the Greek poet Epimedes). In other words God is present and best known in the experience of living, moving, and simply being.

It invites a sense of reverence in the wonder of simply being, and in the wonder of every living being. And could not the world benefit from greater reverence for the lives of our fellow beings?

Paul recognized this reverence and wisdom in the words of a pagan poet. Knowledge of the Divine is not special knowledge possessed by some, but is being alive to the Living One who lives in all of us, and in whom we all live. And move. And are.

There is no way to adequately imagine this. Yet it can be felt. Known by experience. Lived. As God’s Loving Presence in the world. As you, as me, and as we together.

(To see the video of this or any other message developed in a Sunday Gathering at Zion, go to zlcmidway.org and click on videos.)